The job of the web designer can be directly compared with that of an artist. In the online world, the web designer manipulates the digital canvass as if it were organic and adjustable. With point-and-click paintbrush the designer colours, and uploads, installs and positions specific content, creating a picture which should ultimately emerge as a functioning and impressing website.

Having said that, though, the role of the designer should be more than just master of the pretty, creator of the aesthetically pleasing. Working closely with a prospective client, the designer needs to establish exactly what each client requires so as to accurately depict what it is the website needs to be putting across. Once this has been established, an array of tasks and ideas are implemented, mostly at the whim of the designer but done with a specific goal in mind. These tasks could include: adding videos and other multimedia to pages, determining colour schemes that best tap into the psychological mindset of visitors, and generally creating and positioning content that is eye-catching, not to mention ensuring the site is user friendly and easily navigated.

The web designer paints with unlimited medium, but has the daunting task of bringing uncountable content to life. The site that provokes as much emotion as the Mona Lisa or Starry, Starry Night is one that utilises content like animation and photography to engage visual cues; promises the mind delicious delights like full interaction and engaging typography, and teases the sub-conscious with cunningly deployed networks of marketing magic and mind-searing SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategy.

Like a Renaissance master of old, the web designer must be able to create portrait from nothing, and must be able to manipulate content to two very important questions:

Why? With this question in mind, the designer must endeavour to construct to the very purpose and need-for-existence that sparked the call for the website's construction in the first place. Content, graphic, photo, typography and SEO need to blend in composite, watercolour-flow and a create a picture that, from the start, exclaims in beatific clarity, exactly what it is the site will portray, its intent and product offered.

To Whom? Like every professional artist, the web designer may draw from personal frame-of-reference, design preference and even certain liberties spawned from private objectivity and bias. However, from that person should there be liberated a balanced site; an artwork with content, layout, usability, readability and appeal perfectly geared towards the eyes of those intended to gaze upon said work. In other words, to ensure repeat visits and future business, a web designer must apply, with eloquence and style, a fatal attraction (for lack of a better term) to all content shown on the website. He or she must locate the exact target market, and paint, sketch and sculpt to the very desires of that demographic.

With Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) emerging as an increasingly vital technique to website rating and online visibility, the web designer also needs to be well versed and competent, not to mention proficient, in designing sites with SEO in mind. Although not necessarily from a programming point of view, the designer should still be able to build to customer spec with specific targeted keywords and phrases needed to optimise the site, and all without sacrificing overall functionality, readability and ease-of-navigation.

The web designer must have an eye for what works and what will garner the best attention among potential site visitors. With this knowledge, the designer is able to include content that best delivers intent and, at the same time, places the website as high up as possible on search engine rankings. This is the picture the designer paints: a site of aesthetic beauty; a site that can be navigated easily; a site that eloquently declares just exactly what it has to offer, and a site that ranks high on optimisation, easily found by search engine eyes, altogether; a masterpiece.