What Skills Do You Need to Become a Web Designer?

Web designers blend artistic talent with technical expertise and programming skills.

Web design is a multidisciplinary profession combining light programming with aesthetic principles, graphic arts and typography. Web designers draft concepts for the overall appearance of web pages, sites and applications. Approved mock-ups are accurately reproduced with hypertext markup and various scripting languages. While most life cycle processes separate web design and web development, many designers have considerable skill and expertise when it comes to programming and implementing both front-end and back-end code.

Information Systems Technology and Architecture

In addition to advanced computer skills, all web designers should understand how server content is hosted and delivered to a client’s browser. Most web designers can quickly learn new systems and technology, and attempt to stay current with industry trends and software improvements. Designers should understand the web development life cycle, differing content management systems and rapid development frameworks.

Fundamentals of Design, Color Theory and Typography

As web designers are first and foremost commercial artists, they must recognize mainstream aesthetics and understand the principles of effective design. Most designers are creative individuals capable of producing original and attractive concepts on demand. Proficiency and talent with Adobe PhotoShop, Illustrator and vector-based graphic design software is necessary. A close attention to detail is beneficial when building a unified web presence that matches existing designs and logos to new concepts. Designers must also communicate ideas and suggestions through the creative use of negative space, color and typography.

Page Layout and Markup Languages

Web designers should know how to code W3C-compliant markup that is compatible with all popular browser engines. Designers should be able to reproduce mock-ups in valid HTML and XML through the use of tables, containers and style sheets. Nested tables and containers are used to create structure and proper layout. Cascading style sheets (CSS) and client-side scripting languages provide decoration. Adobe Dreamweaver, QuarkXPress and other WYSIWYG editors are attractive for their rapid prototypes and ease of use, but often produce bloated and inefficient code. Successful designers should be comfortable enough with markup syntax to create optimized code by hand.

Front-End and Client-Side Scripting

Client-side scripting is a vital component in the creation of feature-rich websites. JavaScript is a robust, prototype-based, object-oriented scripting language that directly interacts with a page’s Document Object Model (DOM). JavaScript is often implemented to enhance user interfaces, create interactive and dynamic content, produce animated effects, draw and insert graphics on the fly and dispatch asynchronous requests. In addition to learning the fundamentals of DOM manipulation, web designers should familiarize themselves with the different JavaScript libraries. Prototype, Script.aculo.us, jQuery, MooTools, and YUI are all rapid development frameworks that significantly enhance the capabilities and convenience of JavaScript.

Back-End and Server-Side Scripting

While back-end scripting is usually left to developers and programmers, most web designers have at least a rudimentary understanding of how server-side technologies operate. Senior designers and freelancers often familiarize themselves with at least one server-side programming language and a compatible database system. PHP, ASP, JSP and ColdFusion are all frequently used to augment hypertext markup in modern websites and systems. Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle are popular relational database management systems.

Advertising, Marketing and Copywriting

Increasingly important to web designers and their clients is the ability to generate income through advertisements, increase user traffic and click-through rates, and encourage visitors to order products and services. Search-engine optimization (SEO) is a rapidly expanding science centered on increasing visibility and traffic through directories and listings. Designers that understand SEO concepts have the ability to produce content that not only appears more frequently on search engines, but also ranks higher than similar sites and competitors.

Rich Internet Applications

Modern web sites may incorporate elements of Adobe Flash, Flex, Java and Microsoft Silverlight. These frameworks are often used to create rich Internet applications containing complex graphics, fluid animation and user interactivity. While basic content can be quickly produced through the framework's WYSIWYG interface, a web designer wishing to specialize in rich web applications should learn and understand the underlying programming language. The popular frameworks all use common scripting and markup languages that easily translate into other web development efforts.

References

• W3C: Web Design and Applications