It is fair to state that perhaps one of the most widely interpreted & badly defined terms in I.T. is the expression Web-Designer. Website Design takes on board several diverse aspects, and an understanding of these facets could help anybody seeking to get in to the market. Effectively, there are two key sides to web design; the creative side and the 'technical' side. Most people think a 'web designer' is somebody who designs the visible areas of the web-site. Lots of people might consider a web designer a sort of artist. However, a commercial 'web-designer' will really be as involved with the technical element of things as they are with the 'creative' side. It becomes a bit more obvious how things sit together if we break the job down into its component roles.

Firstly, we've got graphic-artists, who design and build the graphic icons and images that you find on any web-site. They most often make this happen by using graphic layout and 'animation' software (like Adobe Flash and 'Photoshop'), & are not really web designers as such. Usually, they will have come from an art background, & might have studied at college or university level. This part is a lot more about a creative artistic ability than any other function.

Web-designers come second - they utilise design software such as Dreamweaver to plan & design the look and feel of the web site. They work with the graphics that are created by the graphic artist, & work with the client to initially create the 'feel' & 'navigational' framework of the web site. A large number of novice web designers place emphasis first on the 'format' of the web site, as opposed to it's function. To create a successful web-site however, it is crucial to first look at what you really want the web site to accomplish. It could be that it is in effect an online inventory, or an E-commerce website where products and services are available there and then. Perhaps you want to show off items by way of video and a heavily graphical interface, or maybe its predominantly an 'informational' web-site where the need is simple access to key text data (such as this site.) Whatever the customer needs from a web site, the fundamental prerequisite is that it actually addresses the basic specification. Most people will give up on a site & not go back if it's too difficult to 'navigate' - however pretty it looks at first glance. A professional web-designer must in essence create an on-line experience that's both pleasurable & instinctive for those coming to the web-site - then they'll come back again and again.

Alternative skill-sets that are relevant to web-site designers in the professional marketplace are a good grasp of E-commerce & project-management. Another area - that isn't to be underestimated - is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). This concerns how to optimize web site listings on Search Engines like Google and Yahoo. And although they generally originate from a network administration background, we mustn't forget the valuable function of the web-server administrators & installers, who keep the whole thing working in the background.

The 'Adobe Creative Suite' is the most commercially popular design environment used by web designers today. These vital programs are currently (2010) on Version 4. The software which builds web-sites is 'Adobe Dreamweaver', and Adobe Flash accesses 'graphical' content that can be animated & interactive. You could actually claim that 'Dreamweaver' is the Word Processor of the Adobe Creative Suite series. Graphics and text can be displayed (according to certain limitations) and then a basic inter-activity can be created by way of page linking. 'HTML' ('Hyper Text Markup Language') program-coding is developed behind the scenes with 'Dreamweaver', much like any web design environment. 'HTML' is a script which essentially 'draws' & controls the web page on your screen. It's the 'language' of web-browsers. Paired with HTML are the lay-out 'tag' languages like CSS and XML. Because these tag 'languages' are standardised, the smoother & rather more efficient outcomes perform successfully on many different platforms. So which-ever web-browser someone uses, ('Internet Explorer', Mozilla Firefox, 'Opera' etc.) the web-page will hopefully appear exactly the same. Subsequently the graphic blocks you're laying and the text you're adding is being turned into code behind the scenes by Dreamweaver. Its vitally important to gain a thorough comprehension of these 'languages' if you wish to be a website designer at a commercial standard.

The most important point to emphasise is that the training itself won't make you a web designer; it will simply provide you with the methods. Put together as many websites as possible whilst you work through your studies - the practice will be invaluable & you will have something to show what you can do. Build sites about a special interest, your family, a favourite band or even TV show. Start to build interactive web-sites & generate 'traffic' to them. 'Adobe' qualifications are very useful, but how you can use the training says far more about you as a web-designer!

Web developers are members of the equation, and also the most technically trained. They won't simply understand HTML, CSS & 'XML', but will have also studied more official programming languages such as 'PHP', ASP.net, VB, 'C#', 'Java' and the like. And as most modern web sites of any kind of size 'store' their information using 'SQL' database technology, they're likely to have a strong handle on this too. The majority of e-commerce websites aren't the result of a large group of web designers who have built 1000s of web-pages in a layout form. More commonly, following the formation of a place holder 'template', the details will be taken from a Database and dynamically inserted. So along with much greater efficiency with the web-site construct, this process also allows for an infinitely more consistent look & feel as well.

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