It is reasonable to say that one of the more widely interpreted and badly perceived definitions in I.T. is the label Web Designer. In fact, web-design does incorporate a variety of diverse aspects, and so it may help to explain things if we break it down. Fundamentally, there are two key areas to web-design; the 'creative' element & the 'technical' process. The typical PC user considers web-designers are responsible for how a web-site looks and 'feels'. Quite simply, they think of web-site designers as artists on the whole. Having said that, a modern 'web-designer' will in actual fact be as involved with the 'technical' side of things as they are with the 'creative' side. We'll illustrate this with greater clarity if we separate web design up into it's component parts.

Graphic artists come 1st - they design and create the icons & images for a web page. Most often they accomplish this by means of graphic layout and 'animation' software (such as Adobe 'Flash' and 'Photoshop'), & aren't really web site designers per-se. Virtually all graphic artists went to university, with a qualification in artistic drawing. Evidently, this job involves a solid artistic flair.

Web-designers come next - these people use design software like Adobe 'Dreamweaver' to create and design the 'look' and feel of the website. Bu utilising visuals from the graphic-artist, they'll assemble the 'navigational' framework of the site, working with the client to make sure that the feel is right. A good number of novice web designers put emphasis to begin with on the 'format' of the site, as opposed to its 'function'. However, to actually build a valuable website, it's important to start with an understanding of what you need the website to really do. It could be that its basically an online inventory, or an E-commerce web-site where products and services can be purchased there and then. It's possible you need to accentuate products and services by means of video and a largely 'graphical' interface, or perhaps its mostly an 'informational' web-site where the necessity is straightforward access to essential text content (such as this particular web-site.) Regardless of what you want from a website, it must - at it's most basic level - carry out the function for which it is designed. There is no point producing a visually impressive web-site that is impossible for individuals to get to where they want! The goal of any good web-designer is to first & foremost create an event that visitors enjoy & feel relaxed with - so they will come back again.

The Adobe Creative Suite is regarded as the most commercially-popular design-environment used by web-site designers nowadays. These vital programs are now (2010) on Version 4. Whilst Adobe Flash offers access to interactive & animated 'graphical' content, Dreamweaver is the software which builds web sites. You could say that 'Dreamweaver' is the Word-Processor of the Adobe Creative Suite series. It allows you to lay graphics and text according to particular parameters & rules, & then produce basic inter-activity via page linking. Like other web design environments, Dreamweaver creates the program code HTML behind the scenes ('HTML' is short for 'Hyper Text Markup Language'). This is the 'language' of web browsers, and is a script that effectively draws & controls the web-page you are looking at. Layout 'tag' 'languages' like XML & CSS are paired with 'HTML'. Because they are standardised, these will work on multiple platforms to allow more streamlined HTML coding & more efficient lay-out techniques. So which-ever web browser somebody uses, (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera etc.) the web page will (hopefully) look the same. So although you lay the graphic-blocks & put in the text, 'Dreamweaver' is turning this into coding in the background. It's crucial to gain a thorough knowledge of these various 'languages' if you wish to be a website designer at a commercial standard.

Commercial web designers can also improve their offering if they branch-out into fields like project-management & e-commerce for instance. SEO ('Search Engine Optimisation') expertise is extremely useful for web experts - this is the skill of getting web sites at or near to the top of the Search Engines like Google for commonly used keyword phrases. And even though they typically come from a network-administration background, we should remember the incredibly valuable job of the web-server administrators and installers, who keep everything working behind the scenes.

The key factor to stress is the fact that training alone will not make you a web designer; it will merely provide you with the techniques. All through your training & study, you have to apply yourself to constructing and creating as many web sites as you possibly can, to prepare & assemble your own portfolio. Your web-sites should be about anything you like - the local music-scene, farm pets, a writer you enjoy or performance cars. Construct an inter-active website, and start generating 'traffic' towards it. 'Adobe' accreditations are very useful, but how you can implement what you've learned says a lot more about you as a web designer!

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