Recently in Flash Category

This post was written by Aquent's Alex Weaver. This is a picture of him.

Athletes from the local T-ball team to the NBA rely on Nike to outfit them with stylish uniforms. To make that process easier and more reliable, Nike needed a next generation online sports clothing application. Creating this app however called for a specialized, temporary addition to their crew, someone who would combine left-brained design thinking with right-brained development skills.

Nike's online system for building and ordering uniforms utilized an older version of Flash. Its ActionScript programming was not organized into a central function list nor was it scalable, and the interface needed usability updates. These three issues increased the likelihood of one worst-case scenario: a uniform design would be lost if the connection were broken at any point during the building process.

Inspired by positive placements in the past, Nike contact Tum Hallrud turned to Aquent's Brian Guidry and Suzy Thompson to find the person Nike needed. Within days Aquent talent Mike Slone was placed on assignment and began working with the Nike team both on- and off-site to develop requirements and explore solution options.

Mike started by creating a set of core functions and components which improved scalability because they could be reused in new uniform design projects, thus cutting future development time nearly in half. From there, he retooled the user interface making it more intuitive and letting the user preview the uniform on the fly. He also shortened download times and reduced frustration by ensuring that the uniform was saved to a database as it was being assembled.

Mike saved Nike tens of thousands in development costs and, by streamlining the uniform creation process, improved the user experience and boosted sales. The folks at Nike were so impressed by his superpowers, they retained his services for two years beyond the initial contract.

Now, what do you think of that?

Thanks to a "re-tweet" by DamienBasile of something ur-tweeted by adellecharles, I present you with this super-extensive and semi-overwhelming list of design resources compiled by a young designer in Hawaii.

Some of this stuff I'd heard of, some not. Still, this just reminds me that others really can benefit from the odds and ends we find while puttering around the world wide web.

Anything missing from this list?

Back in the days when Second Life was being hyped as the future of the web, Clay Shirky quipped that "3D is a crappy way to search." I totally agree, in part because I've often had the experience of looking for something in my house, which came with the three standard spatial dimensions, and wishing I could search these dimensions the same way I search the web: textually.

The shortcomings of 3D search were brought home to me when I stumbled across the Seed Gives Life site. The site itself consists of a semi-explorable faux 3D Flash landscape which looks cool, but is kind of frustrating because, although you can poke around a bit in their pretty pastel forest, there isn't much to actually find there.

Then I found their blog and came across this post, msnbc's Ess feed viewer is pretty awesome." Turns out that msnbc is using an interesting technology, Spectra. which allows you to create a 3D newsfeed. Interestingly enough, since the feed can get kind of crowded, making in difficult to pick out the individual items of interest, they provide you with a tool that allows you to filter the feed view using, tah dah, text-based search.

Promise: 3D can provide a rich and imaginative interface.

Peril: It can be just as cluttered, obscure, and user-unfriendly as reality's own 3D interface.

Solution: Infuse the wonderfully awkward and beautifully frustrating tri-dimensional world (or its digital surrogate) with the awesome power of the hyper-dimensional world (sometimes called "the web").

Image Courtesy of advencap.

Greg Kuchmek, who is represented by Aquent's DC office, has been working on the web since 1994. That's when he was hired to help produce a webzine, Stim, started by Prodigy. [Editor's Note: For an interesting flashback to 1996, read Ty Burr's review of Stim, which he gives a B+, and Slate, which he gives a C+]. When that gig ended in 1997 he discovered that, "3 years web experience was amazing. I was 'senior' automatically."

Flash forward to the present and Greg now has 14 years web experience. If you want to hire someone like Greg (assuming you can find someone like him), what do you have to offer him? He has a broad range of in-demand skills: in addition to ground-up experience with the full suite of web technologies, Greg is also an able photographer, animator, illustrator, and writer. When he goes on a job interview, the pressure is on the interviewer.

What is Greg looking for and how can you convince him to work for you? Listen to his words:

1. Trust

I'm looking for an employer that respects that I have my skills and trusts me to use them. They hire me because I can do something and they can't. It's great when they let me do it.

It's not always like that. I've done jobs where the client was really looking over my shoulder and micro-managing. I understand that everyone's got their personal style, but when that's happening, I don't feel free to be creative and really do what I'm capable of.

2. Flexibility

I don't wear a tie to interviews anymore. I don't need to dress up at this point. I've also got a full studio at home, so I'm even kind of shocked that I have to leave the house! I guess I've been spoiled by working in places like Boston or New York where it's more flexible.

More than flexibility about where work happens, though, I appreciate it when there is flexibility around how things get done. There have been countless little jobs where they needed a photograph and I've told them, "Look, I can spend the day combing through stock or I can go take one." It's great when people are more open to the "I can do this right now" approach, than they are attached to the "this is the way we have to do it" approach.

Aquent held a contest a few weeks back inviting designers to create a Halloween-themed logo treatment on our homepage. We got about 40 responses and the winning entry, created by Kevin Bonixe, a native of Massachusetts but currently a resident of Portugal, debuted on Aquent.com today.

Reaching him via the interweb, I asked Kevin how he got into design and this is what he told me: "I started out taking a course in photography and got introduced to digital photography. When I then began image manipulation in Photoshop, a new world of imagination, color, and creativity opened up to me. It fed my eagerness to learn, evolve, and to search for even better tools to create my vision. Design was the answer."

The work that Kevin ended up doing for us was is in Flash, of course (if you are reading this after Halloween, you can view it here. I asked Kevin what he liked so much about that application. He wrote, "The coolest thing about Flash is the ease of translating your creativity to the stage. When you have a timeline where you can incorporate images, movement, sound interactivity, dynamics, your creativity is your only limit."

Although, for now, Kevin is pursuing a career in business management, he does do some design work on the side, such as this site for a Portuguese hip-hop band, S. Clemente. If you are interested in working with Kevin, he can be reached via Aquent's Barcelona office.

Image courtesy of szlea.

Because I don't live in New York, and have thus not yet seen the giant two-storied rears smiling down on passers-by from high above Times Square, I had to discover the Washlet via AdCritic Interactive. Of course, after that initial tip, I learned all I needed to know about this "revolution in personal hygiene" from the amazing clean is happy site itself.

I'm not sure what is more impressive about this site: the remarkable technology that allows you to go to the bathroom and have a "hands free" experience; the use of Flash and video (which is undeniably great); or the way ML Rogers turns getting your bum sprayed by a self-sterilizing wand into a quality of life issue.

Given the innuendo and double entendre that drives the fairly self-parodic (one commentator wrote, "If I were to make a parody website this would be it") humor behind the "clean is happy" campaign, it's no surprise that most folks writing about it have a hard time reigning in their inner child. AdAge refers to it as "cheeky," Alissa at mediabistro.com's UnBeige calls it '"assvertising," and John at menuism.com's blog writes demurely about the "pleasant buttocks" which adorn the site and the outdoor advertising. For my part, I still can't watch the site without cackling in infantile glee and then, just as the designers no doubt envisioned, gleefully sharing it with others.

All scatology aside, the site is clever, well-designed and, as far as interactive advertising goes, fairly effective. Flash designers, graphic designers, and marketers in the personal hygiene category could all learn something from it. It might even make you happier.