Oct
20
It turns out, I’m not a creative designer. There, I said it!
Last month I was confronted with this reality over lunch at a NMAF event my dear friend Kenny invited to go. Every month, the NMAF organizes a Monthly Luncheon Event at the Embassy Suites @ ABQ. These monthly lunch/talks are a great opportunity to invite people from the industry to come over to Albuquerque and share their insights. Last September, the nice people at NMAF invited Karl Becker, the President and Founder of Denver-based FL2 to talk about “Traditional and Interactive Agency Partnerships: Why They Often Fail and How They Can Work”.
Gotta be honest with you, although I never heard of FL2 nor of his president up until that day, after reading the invitation I was really excited to go and listen to what he got to say on the subject, specially because as an Interactive Agency we deal with Traditional Agencies more often than not, plus FL2 credentials on the invitation were nothing short of impressive.
Karl Becker is the President and Founder of Denver-based FL2 (www.FL-2.com), a high-end, independent interactive agency known for collaborating with like-minded firms in the B2C space to create cutting-edge, world-class websites, as well as for winning dozens of national and international awards (including Communications Arts Interactive Annual, Webby, SWSX, FWA, American Design Awards, Clio, and Flashforward Film Festival). Their clients include Vail Resorts, The Westin, Sims Snowboards, Vision Street Wear, Forest City Development, and Boston Market.
The room was full and the excitement was growing by the minute. Finally, he was introduced and his keynote started. I want to tell you it was good, but the reality is that I personally, didn’t like it. Well, to be fair, he did talk about his partnerships with other agencies, but nothing too solid or noteworthy.
He did however, enlightened the audience with pieces of FL2’s portfolio. He described in several occasions how “creative” FL2’s approach were and how happy the clients ended up paying huge amounts for the results. How much you ask? Between 70K and 100K (and up).
The pieces of work showcased during the keynote (links below) were according to the president of the agency, creative solutions to their client’s problems.
Now, this is where I started to get uncomfortable. Was I the only people in the room who realized none of the work samples, NOT ONE was a XHTML/CSS site? Was I the only people in the room who instead of applauding the work, was concern about SEO and how those websites would render on other mobile platforms, say… the iPhone? A reality check with my name on it was being handed over to me and the verdict was: I’m not a “creative” designer. Not by FL2’s standard anyway.
What is worse (IMHO) is the fact that Karl made it pretty clear at the beginning of his keynote, how happy and proud they are of their unconventional… style? applied to their designs, specially their own website (which I kid you not, was criticized by one of their own clients according to Karl himself). What do I mean by style? The problem with most flash websites is that their execution forces the message/product to be shaped in a way that fit inside its container, rather than the other way around. Almost like trying to fit a triangle inside a circle.
Well, maybe it’s not a Flash problem, maybe it’s a Designer problem. I come from the first generation of web designers, those who preached the benefits of Flash long before it became trendy or even a mainstream “plugin” (how we called it at the time), but then learned the hard way, the benefits of building a better web. A web that should be transportable, mobile, agile, and what’s more important, easy to use. At some point we realized that our actions (good ones AND bad ones) were not only shaping today’s web, but also today’s users. It is because of what we did (or didn’t) that inherently you know how to “scan” a website, that you will find a link to the homepage if you just click on the logo at the top of the page, that nav bar should tell you where you are at all times, even, where elements should be and how you interact with them intuitively.
So when I see a Flash website, breaking the web I help built, I want to ask whoever did it, was it really worth it? Where all that people in the room saw the “coolness” of having an animated nav bar that doesn’t look like a nav bar, I see people getting frustrated trying to “figure out” how to engage their websites. Where all the people in that room saw an original and creative “style”, I see a Designer trying to put his latest learned-skill to the test. That’s my problem with Flash (and I love Flash!) No matter how well done a Flash website might be, there will always be a percentage of users who will not receive “the message” you were trying to get across, whether it’s because of the long intro, the background music, their browsers crashing because of the full screen video, or might even be as simply as they trying to access it from a flash-impaired device, again… ever heard of the iPhone?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to come across as a Flash hater and I’m not saying that Flash websites should be banished from the World Wide Web, nor am I implying that FL2’s sucks, in fact I believe their ideas and the quality of their art direction is impecable, but I’m pretty darn sure the web I know and I want to continue building is more than just (and I quote) “a slideshow with just 4 photos and ambience sound”.
What I’m saying to all the Designers that love producing 2Advanced-looking-flash-websites is that if you ABSOLUTELY must do Flash, do it in a way that it’s transparent to the user. Always provide an alternative XHTML Version, and ideally, one that doesn’t SUCK compared to the full version. I know this sometimes collide with the budget allocated for the project, but at least try to explain the benefits of it to your clients. Don’t try to re-invent the way people browse the web, it will only look cool for the first 2 weeks, once people get bored used to how it looks, they will expect something more substantial, more intuitive than just a looped video on the background of the page. Want an example? Remember how cool this car looked when the movie first came out in 2001? Can you imagine driving that same car for 4 years? Design is not only how it looks, it’s how it works.
A designer named Jonathan Harris, recently gave a talk at a Flash conference, attended by a community of people that pride themselves on producing amazing work, and his constructive criticism didn’t go over too well (link via: Kottke)
With a number of notable exceptions, most of the work I see coming from the Flash community is largely devoid of ideas. There is great obsession with slickness, surface, speed, technology, and language, but very little soul at the core, very little being said. I believe that in the long run, ideas are the only things that survive.
It’s refreshing to know people are starting to see past the bling-bling of Flash websites. When Karl finished his keynote and after sharing with the audience the 3 links from above, I felt the same way, I’m just hoping I was not the only one inside that room. Design should be about solving problems in a creative way/space. If we just keep reshaping the message/products to fit inside our containers, will never find room to grow creatively, we’ll be just filling our ideas/flavor-of-the-month-flash-effect with the client’s brand and products, and what is worse, charging them for it.
1
Great article. I had a conversation with a new friend this weekend over the pitfalls of building websites in flash, and also how SilverLight doesn’t even come close to that of Flash. But that’s a whole other conversation starter.
So keeping on track, I whole-heartedly agree that those of us who intend to move the web forward must do so in the most usable way possible. The standards that are being set now are only a loose framework compared to the solid structure they will become in the near future. But it’s nonetheless important to build off a solid foundation now.
And yes, web design in general needs more soul.
2
Move the web forward. Dang it, that would’ve made a much better title for this post!
I obviously agree with you and I appreciate your time to stop bye.
3
Awesome read, I’ll be showing this article to a few people!
I have to agree that Flash itself is not the problem, it’s the way it’s being used. I think your line: “put his latest learned-skill to the test” sums up the actions and decisions made by many upcoming web designers and developers for that matter. However, it’s a necessary phase for many to allow their passion and skills as designers to grow.
That passion just needs to be kept in check. Complement it with others that can intelligently critique your work. Collaboration & criticism can be a harsh mistress, but it keeps your designs real for the web.
4
When developers know what they are doing with the complexities of ActionScript and flash development, SEO pitfalls can be easilly overcome. Traditional SEO is not quite as accurately effective as people tend to think of it. Take the same sites you just used in your example. Type “Vision” and who’s on the first page?
Sam thing with Sims, type just the word “Sims” and notice we are on the front page as well, not bad considering the link and keyword popularity of EA’s Sims franchise.
5
Amen, brotha, amen. I feel the same way when I read HOW and see the few websites they feature. There is this entrenched attitude regarding Flash amongst many on the “creative” side of things — who seem, at least, to primarily come from a print background. Flash in a very one-dimensional solution to communication. Are custom interfaces better than being able to communicate widely? No. Ultimately they are far too restrictive. Flash is not “web design”. It’s niche multimedia production.
A good case study in Flash-based site design is MTV. For so long their site was Flash-based. And it sucked something horribly. Finally, they woke up and moved to a largely semantic, standards-based site. I don’t visit, but if I see a link to MTV for something that interests me, I’m infintely more likely to follow it.
This also leads me to something I was going to blog about, but I’m pissed enough I’m just going to mention it here. I was recently contacted to help bail out a designer who was having problems with her site. It turns out, she downloaded a table-based template. It was such a horrid framework, and she was working mainly in Dreamweaver without a clue about how to properly code. In response to something I said, she replied, “Seriously! I just designs [sic] them!”
She is no more a designer because she can bumble through code than I am a chef for knowing how to sauteé some peppers in a damned skillet. It’s charlatans like these who make it so hard for us — for people to see the value in a properly coded, well-designed, well-architected site.
The real question is, do we start a flame war, or do we rise above these subsets of designers who are ignorant and harmful to the industry they claim to be a part of? And how do we best educate clients?
6
Dude, thank you so so much for stopping by. I totally see what you are saying. Grady Bosch once said:
“One of the things that new tools do is to help bad designers do uglier designs faster than in the past”
With the recently launch of Adobe’s Flash Player 10 (and its new features) you can only guess where designers like the one you mentioned are going next. That’s right buddy 3D EFFECTS EVERYWHERE!!
You know the media is maturing when one of the most acclaimed Flash shops (if not THE most) like Fantasy Interactive who’s been producing incredibly-eye-catching- breath-taking Flash work for the past 10 years are publicly saying they have “matured”.
“Our sites used to reach out, grab the user, shake them vigorously and scream, “Made by Fantasy Interactive!” Fi was notorious for developing everything and anything in Flash, Today in Fi, you will only find Flash in places it needs to be and fits. Looking back over the past nine years, the average website has matured substantially. Choosing the correct technology is imperative for a company’s goals.”
- David Hugh Martin, Fi’s CEO & Founder on Where is the Flash?
Personally I HOPE it’s just a matter of time til they also mature and realize they only need to use Flash “where it needs to be and fits”.
7
Woooord. You have to look at what the function or point of a website is. If the point is to grab a consumers attention and establish a brand affinity, then flash is more effective than most give it credit for. Take our website for example, as it is already used in this story: We don’t sell shoes. We don’t sell clothes, and we have little information to offer, so what exactly is the point of our website? We sell brand experience, and create a connection or affinity with our brand. Can this be more effectively done by not using flash? Maybe, but to establish the same level of multimedia immersion as we currently do, it would be extremely difficult, maybe even impossible. Our last Vision Streetwear site was not built in Flash, but hard coded with good practice and standards, yet we didn’t receive half of the traffic we receive now.
It’s not always about which environment or format is most effective overall, it’s about which format is more effective to the brand or service you represent.
Tom you mention “Niche Multimeda Production”, I couldn’t agree with you more. If we were to actually sell shoes on our site, we would likely still use flash, but we would implement it with CSS positioning, JavaScript, HTML, etc, as each language definitely has it’s strengths. Personally, I believe it is not about eliminating flash completely, but integrating it correctly with various methods as I am sure many of you agree.
Juanma, you said it perfectly with “Personally I HOPE it’s just a matter of time til they also mature and realize they only need to use Flash “where it needs to be and fits”.
VisionStreetwear.com and Simsnow.com are entirely flash on the front-end, but the main reason for this is due to the fact that we had little content to present at the time, so it worked well for us. Anyways, great post!
8
Wow! First off, I’m honored to have y’all here! Thank you Vision Streetwear for taking the time to explain your POV and provide insights for us, not familiarized with the Brand and the project.
I hope you can agree with me that the idea of this post is not to start a war on Flash websites, nor Vision StreetWear neither FL-2 for that matter (like I said before, I found their art direction and ideas impecable) but to start the discussion on whether Flash should continue to be the de facto tool when it comes to interactive websites that want to provide a great user experience. I say that with today’s technologies flying around, it shouldn’t, and you and everybody else are more than welcome to disagree with mine opinion.
Take Apple’s website. It’s incredible the level of interaction and multimedia they have achieved without using Flash. Is it a niche? Of course it is, (Safari/Firefox a must as well as Quicktime) but the point of the matter is that it CAN be done, and from my humble position (that is, me being a grain of sand compared to the mountain FL-2 is) I just find it curious and worth noting that big agencies with big budgets who can afford to explore new technologies (and thus, move the web forward), still find themselves more comfortable going with Flash.
Once again I appreciate taking the time to stop by. Thank you!
9
I agree completely. I glanced at the Wilder Orinda site and couldn’t really find any content. It was artistic but didn’t communicate very much of interest.
I found the Wilder Orinda by a 1/6 page ad in the Wall Street Journal. That ad couldn’t have been cheap.
So it looks like the real attraction to Flash is the $100K. That might motivate me to be a Flash hacker. There doesn’t seem to be any other rationale.
Roger
