With the growing Information technology industry day by day, the requirement of skilled web designing professionals is increasing exponentially. As the World Wide Web is stretching its legs to even remote areas, the industries are in need for the professionals who may help in developing and designing the websites as per their requirements.
No need to say, today almost every big and small company has its own website and many other companies (Which still don’t have one of their own) intend to have one website. Hence for the maintenance and development of existing websites and for the designing of new websites, we require skilled professionals and that’s where web designers come into picture.
Actually, the rate with which the websites are coming into existence now-a-days makes this profession, an exciting and rewarding profession. This profession not only requires sound knowledge of the related subjects but also creativity, team work and imagination. So when we talk about the web designing, then you are definitely having the 4- aces on your finger tips – Creativity, Flexibility, imagination and job security. So, If you think that you have the above prerequisites, then surely, this profession is for you.
Nature of Work
As a web designer, your primary work is to “Design” the website i.e. the creation of looks for website. Whatever users ‘see’ in the website is the imagination of the web designer. The work of web designer is to effectively present the content to the users. Hence, the organization and the way to present the website to the user are up to the web designer.
To sum it all up, the web designer is responsible for the look and feel of the web pages and he works on WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors.
So, What Is Actually The Work of Web Designer?
In simple words, as a web designer, your job is to create, rather, ‘design’ the website. The web designer’s work starts from the very first day the clients hire him to make his web site. From this time to the time of publication of the site, web designer is involved in almost every aspect. Even after the publication, the further additions to the website often require his assistance. So the planning stage itself begins with the web designer.
The web designer meets the clients and discusses their needs related to website. Here, the web designer proposes his ideas, recommendations, views, different layout options of the proposed website and other choices like color etc. as per the requirement of the site. Sometimes the clients are not satisfied with the ideas of the web designer so they may give their own web template or may ask the web designer to design a new template according to their wish. All choice of the content like, texts, images, videos etc. is put up by client and the web designer is asked to work on them. The web designer does some customization and finally comes up with newly designed website! Here, the creativity of the web designer is involved. He is given some content, and with his skills and creativity, he is supposed to make a new web site!
Career prospects of web designing
With the growing dependence of the world on the internet, the career in Web designing has emerged as a career with huge potential. With many companies launching their websites every day, finding a job for a skilled web designer is not difficult. A good web designer is always in demand of various publishing houses and companies. Hence, he may:
1) Do job in a company.
2) Moreover, he may use his skills as a freelancer.
3) Next to it, he may also go for a promising business.
Let’s put on some light on the all three aspects of this career:
1) Do a Job in a company:
To start with, a web designer may start his work with any advertising firm or company as a layout artist, graphic designer or by simply becoming a member of their web designer team.
2) As a Freelancer:
As soon as, he gains skills in this profession and after polishing his other qualities, he may start working as freelancer. The web designer at this stage may offer templates for free download to the users. The more and more users incline for their templates, the more the web designer gets popular.
3) As a Businessman:
When the templates gain sufficient popularity, the web designer may put the template on sale, and hence now on words start working as a businessman.
Is there any difference between Web Designing and Web Developing?
Now the next question that just strikes the mind that, are the two terms Web Designing and Web Developing similar or different? People often use the two terms “web design” and “web development” interchangeably without knowing that there is a difference in both. If you are advancing your career in this field by working under a company or as starting your own business then you must have knowledge about the difference between both and select your path accordingly.
Web Design: Web design or website design is the front end or you can say “customer-facing part” of the website. For a web designer the paramount concern is about how a site looks and how the customers interact with it. Whether a website is easily navigable or is it user friendly, a good web designers need to know. He should put together the principles of design to create a site that looks aesthetic. Designers also understand about usability and how to create a site that customers want to navigate around with much easiness.
Web Development: In a contrary, web development shows the back-end of the website, the programming and interactions on the pages. A web developer needs to focus on how a site works and how the customers get things done on it. Good web developers know how to program CGI and write scripts like PHP, ASP. They have knowledge about web forms working and can troubleshoot the site in any means to keep it running effectively.
Technical Skills and knowledge required for Web designing
While starting your career as a web designer or a web developer there are some preliminary subjects or technical skills on which you need to focus on to build a strong promising career in this field. You need to have adept knowledge on some key subjects which form the firm basis of any website or its designing.
Here is the list which includes information about the technical skills which must be known to a web designer before he marks his presence as a web designer.
a. HTML (Hyper Text MarkUp Language): HTML is the nub of any website design. And it’s the most important thing that a web designer or a web developer can learn. Even if are planning to work on editors like Dreamweaver, knowing HTML will give you an idea or basic information of how the Web works so that your designs will be more effective and attractive. Learning HTML will help in both cases whether you are a designer or developer.
b. CSS( Cascade Stylesheets): After HTML, CSS is the most important language web designers need to learn. It gives the layout of the webpage and tells how the webpage will look like. The page design grabs the first attention of any website so in order to show the best you need to learn CSS. CSS is very crucial to Web designers. CSS play a vital role in designing cutting edge websites.
c. JavaScript and AJAX: JavaScript is client side programming language. JavaScript is the first interactive element of a website and it is more useful for Web developers. As it is client side language, it reduces the weight of webpage during transitions between server and client.
Using AJAX tools and JavaScript many validations and alerts are applied on webpage that too on client side.
d. Flash: There are many sites which are totally based on Flash. Flash brings animation and vector graphics to Web pages. Knowledge on Flash programming is like glitter in the gold. Web designers can learn Flash to round out their design and graphics knowledge.
e. PHP, ASP, Java, and Perl: These are the server side programming languages that a web developer needs to learn. Programming Web pages starts with the language you use. The whole website is based on programming whether it is linking of pages, computational tasks or linking to database. One should have a proficient knowledge in at least one these of languages.
f. Database connectivity: Every site needs to maintain a database record in some or the other way. Learning how to build and maintain a database is essential to most Web applications. MySQL, SQL, server, MS access are some popular databases on the Web which are needed to be learnt. Web developers would find knowing some databases, administration can be done easily.
g. Web Server Administration: The most common use of Web Server is to host websites. It helps to deliver content that can be accessed through the Internet. So if you are planning to have a business in web designing you must have knowledge about the Web server on which your website is running on. This can help you to solve problems and make your sites run better. Web developers should learn more about the server so that they can troubleshoot their scripts and programs.
Basic Skills you must have in building a career in Web Designing
a. Design sense and Creativity: As “need is the father of invention” similarly creativity results in a good design of website. Designing a webpage is very important for Web designers. There is a lot more to learn than simply knowing which colors you like. You should be aware of the elements of design as well as the basic design principles. Web designers must know design but for the web developers it is not so crucial, unless they are working as a freelancer.
b. Project Management: One should be adroit in Project management as it is a critical job skill for nearly anyone. By knowing how to manage a project, you can keep it on track and up to date that will be liked by every manager you work with. Both Web designers and Web developers will benefit from knowing project management.
c. Time Management: The key factor in any project completion is the time duration it requires. Every project must be completed within timelines. This will help you enhance your opportunities and won’t allow you to lag behind in the competitive world.
d. Expertise: One man can’t change the whole world. A man can be adept in some specific skills but he cannot do everything with. So before beginning the career you must know what is your area of interest, whether you are good at developing or at designing. After knowing your skills you must gain expertise in that area only and select the path there on.
e. Originality: Whatever you show must be original and innovative. You can become a master of disguise but in order to compete in this world your hardwork and originality will be the factors to win you a race. The designs must not be copied from others and they should reflect the hard work you implied.
f. Keep yourself updated: In this everyday changing world scenario, technology is also changing frequently. So you should be aware of the latest technology and should use the tools which the market demands. Like HTML 5, Web 3.0 Design, font replacement, web printing softwares are in trend. So keep updating your knowledge if you want to fight in this competitive world.
freelancing is a very beautiful job as it gives anyone the freedom to work as they please.