The Internet and technology have come a long way over the years. Technology is usually advancing so fast that it makes it difficult to buy things because everyone knows they will be out dated within a couple of months. Along with the advancing technology and advancing capabilities of the internet, professional web design has come a long way as well. Websites are now filled with high quality graphics, flash, javascripts, web applications and programs and just like with technology it will only get bigger and better.
The first online website ever created was made by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991. Obviously this was nothing fancy, in fact, it was just black text on a white background. Back when the internet was starting out this was all you needed. Companies did not care at all what a web site looked like because if you had a web page up, any web page at all, then you were already ahead of the game. The websites did not need to be super fancy because there were so little websites out there that there was not really any competition.
Then came the template style web pages. These were the next generation of websites that had images and color along with all the necessary content. Most of them were very uniform and blocky looking but they got the job done. For the time, these were great looking websites and most companies trying to get online would purchase or create these template style websites. It was nice because you could throw up your logo and use company colors and the site would look like a professional web design for your company. Template style websites are still created and used today although most of them have gone beyond the old school, blocky, uniform design.
Now the internet has gotten a whole lot faster and computer programs like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver have made it possible to create almost any web design you want. Also now that the internet is so big and so widely used, it is pretty much necessary for a company to have their own website. Now that there is so much competition online, companies are hiring web designers and creating unique and creative web designs to stand out and be different from the competition. Web designers and webmasters are constantly thinking of new, creative ways to professionally design websites and make them work. Here are some examples of some sites with really impressive flash capabilities: http://www.bluecotton.com or http://www.xpoz.com. This site here, http://www.thefwa.com, has actually compiled a collection of creative and innovative websites; these sites are about as hardcore creative and unique as you can get, feel free to browse through and see the creativity and online capabilities of some of these sites.
As you can see, the web has now become a whole new entity. It has grown into something so big, it is hard to imagine the types of things you can find online. So if you are a business without a website or a business with a pretty basic website, it is coming to that point in time where you need to get online and stand out from your competition with a high-quality professional web design.