Do you need a well-defined, mind-blowing web presence? Or need to change your existing site into an exciting multimedia experience? Web designers can do that for you and more. They can create that dream site.

Designing for the web means designing in sync with the way people actually use the web. Web designing requires a cocktail of creative skills and technical prowess. Web designers create graphic images first and then arrange them on the web page.

A website should be useful to your target audience, meeting their needs and expectations without being too difficult to use.

What do i have to do?

Web designers create the graphics for websites. At the designing stage, the website acquires its look and feel as the page grid, page design, and overall graphic design standards are created and approved by the clients.

The illustrations, photography, and other graphic or audio-visual content for the site are commissioned and created at a later stage.

The final construction of the actual web pages includes the following components:

• Graphic design specifications for all page types.

• Finished interface graphics for page templates.

• Header and footer graphics, logos, buttons and background theme and colour.

• Illustrations.

• Photography.

Popular website development software packages such as Macromedia’s Dreamweaver and Flash offer interesting templates and standard reusable libraries of site graphics and HTML that make it easy to create new pages as well as to maintain your site. Flash movies, Java applets, animation and other rich media have also become increasingly popular over the years.

Web designers choose the text and background colours very carefully. For example, dark-coloured text on a light-coloured background is easier to read than light-coloured text on a dark-coloured background. All graphic images and elements, typefaces, headings, and footers should remain consistent throughout the website.

That helps project a professional image.

Professional designers first scan a photo or graphic image at a much higher resolution before shrinking it down for the web. This is done to preserve the image quality while making any necessary graphic adjustments. This process may include cropping the image to get rid of unwanted areas, rotating the image to keep it straight, retouching the image, compressing the image, etc. A professional designer will test your photo or graphic image to make sure that it will show up properly under all circumstances.

What should i study?

A lot of creativity is required to be a successful web designer. Knowledge of advertising, graphics, art and design is preferable. A bachelors degree in multimedia or design helps, although the level of education is not as much of a factor as an eye for designing for achieving success in this field.

What next?

Career prospects in this area are excellent. There has been a rapid expansion of the Internet during the last few years, leading to a burgeoning demand for professional website designers. The need for companies to have an attractive net presence has led them to hire web designers in large numbers.

In fact, web designers who can capture the attention of the audience for brand awareness, advertising and sales are much in demand. They hire many freelance and consulting web designers who are paid quite handsomely for their efforts.

Web designers are sought in every field imaginable, from the entertainment industry to the healthcare industry, because every company or organisation wants to disseminate information on the web.

You can be employed as a web designer, animator, art director or design manager in web design studios and advertising agencies in India and abroad. Being a web designer prepares you for careers in other multimedia applications as well.

where to study

• Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Chandigarh.
• CMC Ltd, Janakpuri, New Delhi.
• ARENA Multimedia (Aptech Limited), New Delhi.
• Central Systems and Technologies, Dhantoli, Nagpur.
• Cadgraf Digitals Private Limited, 2, Wheatcrofts Road, Nungambakkam, Chennai.