No doubt just about one of the most mis-understood and over-worked titles in the IT field today must be the term 'Web-Designer'? For anybody looking to get in to the market, an explanation of the diverse facets should help to clarify things. There are essentially two sides to web design - the 'technical' side & the creative design side. To the average person in the street, a 'web designer' is somebody who designs the 'look' & feel of a website. In other words, they view web-site designers as artists in the main. In fact the present day web-designer's career is an inter-related mix of 'technical' knowledge and design-creativity - and the two have become quite difficult to separate. We can illustrate this with greater clarity if we separate web-design down in to it's different parts.

Graphic-artists should come 1st - they design & create the symbols & pictures for a website. Most often they make this happen by means of graphic layout and 'animation' software (like Adobe Flash & Photoshop), and aren't strictly site designers as such. The majority of graphic artists attended university or college, with a background in art and design. This particular aspect is more about creative expertise than anything else.

Second, there are the site designers, that use design-environments such as Dreamweaver to generate the layout and feel of the site. Through the use of graphics from the graphic-artist, they'll construct the navigational composition of the website, working with their clients to be sure the 'feel' is correct. A web-designer with limited understanding would most likely begin with the 'form' instead of the function of a site. Although, to really create a useful web-site, you must begin with a clear understanding of the things you require the web-site to actually do. Is it for the most part an E-commerce web site, which needs to have the ability to receive payments securely, or is it perhaps an on-line product catalogue listing? Or maybe it'll include a lot of video and heavy graphics. On the other hand it could be largely an information web site, where its important to provide straightforward access to relevant web pages of wording. Fundamentally the web site must have the capacity to meet its required needs - whatever those particular needs are. People will give up on a web-site & not go back if it's too hard to get around - however pretty it appears on the surface. The over-riding goal of every professional web-site designers is to have people pay a visit to their site on a regular basis - so it really needs to be a relaxed and enjoyable experience.

Supplemental skillsets that are very useful to commercial web designers are a knowledge of project-management & E-commerce. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) knowledge is also extremely useful for web experts - this deals with the art of getting websites to or near the top of the Search Engines like Google for frequently used keyword phrases. And of course, we shouldn't overlook the web-server installers & administrators that stay in the background making sure the whole thing works; though they usually originate from a network-administration background.

Web 'developers' are essentially the most technically apt of all. Together with being proficient in 'HTML', 'XML' and 'CSS', web-developers will understand other highly regarded programming languages such as Visual Basic, 'PHP', Java, 'C#' and ASP.Net for example. A large number also have an effective understanding of 'SQL', the database-language - since the data on most sizable modern web-sites is stored in this particular 'language'. The majority of E-commerce web sites aren't actually the result of a big team of web designers who've constructed thousands of web-pages in a layout format. What typically occurs is a place holder template is produced, and the contents are automatically inserted from a Database to the site. This process not only makes the building, management & updates massively more efficient, it also makes for a far more consistent web site.

Several of these tasks can and do crossover obviously, we use several freelance web-designers who each cover most of the above functions. Nevertheless, it takes time to develop that level of skill. You'll need to be trained in several things on a commercially viable web design training package: A synopsis of the basic fundamentals of web-design first, then straight on to using Dreamweaver to a commercial level & the principal technicalities of 'Flash' too. The languages of HTML and 'CSS' need to be taught next, with a level of E-commerce instruction provided here. PHP must be taught so dynamic web-sites can be designed (ASP.NET is far more involved, & 'PHP' is more straightforward to get into at first,) & a simple understanding of databases and SEO should be achieved. Grasping these skillsets will give you the ability to start working on a decent cross-section of web sites. The actual physical skill-sets have to develop first of all, before you fine-tune them to a more natural flowing style - just like when you were learning to drive a car. You'd have to give yourself something like 400 - 500 hours to study & effectively grasp a wide-ranging training program of this nature - therefore if your aim is to do this alongside a job it could be completed within twelve months. As there's a lot of facts to consider, its worth taking the time to look carefully at any training-programs that interest you. Speak to somebody with industry knowledge to help you put things together.

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