Oscar Trelles

Is there a future for ‘Flash designers’?

Lately, I’ve been popped up this question in many occasions, thus blogging about this may come in place, and might interest some audience. Most people talking in lists I’m in are developers from different levels and backgrounds, and I hardly get to talk to producers from the early days of Flash, when it was a cool way to make animated banners or e-cards. So, what’s in Flash MX 2004 for designers?

The latest generation of Flash has been made to appeal more to application developers all over the place. This is quite evident if we center our attention on Flash Professional. Being a deseloper (my current stats: 60% developer, 40% designer), I’ve found very pleasant improvements in the Flash production environment, the developer inside me is very happy and standing on his tongue. But my designer is quite bored… nothing new has been introduced that can be of use from an artistic point of view.

Timeline effects did you say? Well, some of those cheap tricks are nice, but they won’t make it in a serious production environment. ActionScript Behaviors? Hey, if the designer inside me uses them, my developer will kill him… seriously. Video integration…. well, now that’s something to be excited about, but is not directly a design matter, but important as a production asset.

That’s the reason the balance is still very positive for me, the guy that produces and integrates applications and content. It would be fair to say that Flash (since version 5) has make me cross the development/design boundaries, and that there’s no way back now…