How to Become a Web Designer: 5 Essential Web Design Skills

A web designer designs websites and applications that are aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate for users. They are in charge of the website’s front-end—which the users see and experience—and create the site’s layout, structure, branding, and graphic design elements. Web designers need to understand visual design principles, such as color theory and typography, to create successful designs. Web designers can work on a per-project basis, for an agency specializing in web design, or as an in-house designer for a company.

Web design requires technical skills and knowledge of software, including:

1. 1. UX Design: User experience design is one of the foundational principles of web design theory. Web designers must know how people consume and process information to create the best user experience. Successful web designers create website designs with good usability, a pleasing user interface, and responsive designs that adapt to different screen sizes. UX design also requires web designers to create sitemaps and wireframes to see all the paths a user can take on the website.
2. 2. SEO: Web designers should understand SEO (search engine optimization) and incorporate concepts like keywords and SEO-friendly URLs when designing websites to make it easy for search engines like Google to find the site.
3. 3. Programming languages: Most web designers know one or two programming languages that enable them to build websites from scratch. Experienced web developers typically know HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), the basic languages for building all websites. HTML is the structure and content of a page, while CSS is the design (such as color and font). PHP, Python, Javascript, and Flash are also programming languages for interactive websites.
4. 4. Design software: Dreamweaver allows web programmers to design websites and edit code. Web designers use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to create website mockups and compress images for web viewing.

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