Its reasonable to state that perhaps one of the more broadly interpreted & improperly understood definitions within IT is the expression 'Web Designer'. If you're thinking of getting in to the market, some details of the distinctive aspects ought to help to make things clear. You'll find there are fundamentally 2 sides to web design - the technical side and the 'creative' design part. To the average person in the street, a web designer is someone that designs the look & 'feel' of a site. Quite simply, they think of web-designers as artists on the whole. But in actuality, in modern web-design it's getting more and more difficult to split up the technical side from the 'creative' side, because both are so intertwined. We can illustrate this with more clarity when we separate web design down into it's different parts.

Graphic artists come 1st - they design & create the icons & pictures for a web site. Strictly speaking, graphic-artists are generally not really web-designers. More commonly they're multimedia artists who make use of software like Adobe 'Photoshop' and 'Flash' to produce their results. The majority have come from further education, typically with a degree standard art background. Above all else, this kind of job requires sound creative skill.

Second of all, we have the web designers, that work with design environments such as Adobe 'Dreamweaver' to generate the layout & feel of the webpage. Using visuals from the graphic-artist, they will build the navigational structure of the web-site, working together with their clients to make sure the 'feel' is correct. A web designer with little knowledge would probably start with the form rather than the function of a web site. To be able to develop a successful website though, it is crucial to first look at what you essentially would like the web site to do. Potentially it's basically an online brochure, or an e-commerce site where products and services are available directly. Possibly somewhat like this web site the main objective is straightforward access to pertinent details, or perhaps it's going to be a showcase for products by way of video and a heavily graphical inter-face. Fundamentally the site must be able to meet it's requirements - whatever those requirements are. Consumers will abandon a website & not return if it is too complicated to navigate - however pretty it looks on the surface. The overriding purpose of all good web-designers is for people to see their web site on a regular basis - therefore it really needs to be a relaxed & enjoyable experience.

Commercial web designers can also up-grade their offering if they choose to branch out into areas such as project management & E-commerce for example. Another area - that isn't to be under-estimated - is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). This is focused on how to optimise web-site indexation on search engines like Google and Yahoo. And whilst they typically come from a network-administration background, we mustn't forget the valuable work of the web-server administrators & installers, who keep everything working in the background.

The most important tools utilised by web designers are their design environments, with Adobe Creative Suite (now in version 4 as of 2009/2010) staying essentially the most popular commercially. Dreamweaver is the software which builds websites, with 'Flash' providing usage of interactive and animated graphical content. In many ways we could look at Dreamweaver as a rather fancy Word Processor. Graphics & text can be placed (according to certain parameters) & then a basic inter-activity can be produced by means of page linking. HTML ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program coding is developed in the background with 'Dreamweaver', as with any other web design environment. Essentially, this 'language of web browsers' is actually a script that 'draws' & controls the web-page being looked at. Together with HTML are the layout tag 'languages' - such as CSS and XML. These tag languages enable more stream-lined HTML code & more effective layout techniques, that will work on multiple-platforms (because they're standardised). The concept being that the page will look identical on any browser, be it Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, 'Opera' or whichever. So although you are placing graphic-blocks and adding text, behind the scenes, Dreamweaver is turning this into code. If you're planning to be a commercially viable web designer, you will have to have a thorough understanding of these types of languages.

The main factor to emphasise is the fact that training alone won't make you a web designer; it will merely teach you the techniques. As you get into your training-course, spend some time to put together & develop a broad range of your own websites to produce a profile of your work. Design web sites about a favourite hobby, your family, a favourite band or even Television show. Start inter-active web sites & create 'traffic' on to them. Anything you do will enhance your Curriculum Vitae, & indicate more to an interviewer than an Adobe certification.

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