Flash banners where not something I ever imagined myself working on when I moved into developing flash. But over the last few years I’ve done quite a few and everyone seems to approach the design and development of these quite differently.

Back in New Zealand (where I’m from) if you’re a web design and developer there wasn’t really much of a distinction between the two disciplines, you’re expected to know and perform both. Since travelling to London though and spending time in freelancing in various companies there seem to be two distinct groups of flash producers, they are ‘flash designers’ & ‘flash developers’. A Flash Designer refers to the timeline expert, someone who has mastered the art of keyframes not all to dissimilar to after effects and other timeline based software. Coming from a background as a television editor this was how I first understood the world of flash. The second group are the Flash Developers. People more experienced with programming, specifically ActionScript 2 & 3 with a focus on object orientated programming (OOP). AS3 and OOP are what I’ve personally spent the better part of the last 4 years studying and working with in flash projects.

Being a new resident in London and living off New Zealand dollars I was eager to take the first work that came along. So when I put my CV together I called myself a Flash Designer/Developer, in part because at the time I didn’t really understand the distinction between the two and I saw that these roles where what people where asking for. Needless to say it worked and I landed a stack of jobs through my recruitment agency who pitched me as both.

In my experience recruitment agencies in London tend to scope out banner work to flash designers and so far this is what I’ve predominantly been working on. More often than not the initial banner is already built (be it a preliminary creative or an old set to be updated) and it’s assumed I will continue building off the methodologies of the previous designer/developer. In most cases this is messy but fine and in others it’s so bad as to force me to re-build the banner from the ground up. In many of these ‘re-build’ scenarios I’ve been able to use my development knowledge to enhance the creative to be more interactive or dynamic. I should note that when I do this I always make the first version exactly as it was and then the enhanced version in case (as sometimes they do) they want the older looking version.

It’s for this reason of opening up flash files that were so badly put together that I thought I should write this post. Upon having to update or modify existing banners I would open the flash file only to spend most of the production time just trying to sort out what’s going on and where things are. More often than not there was no structure to the file library, things were named inappropriately if named at all, items are not categorised or collated with other relevant clips, redundant placeholders can be found all over the show, unnecessary scaling, hidden AS2 code snippits and my personal favorite sub pixel placements that give objects that jagged edge look.

Now if it’s a really old flash banner I can’t really be that picky, but if it’s been built in the last year or two it’s incredibly frustrating. There seem to be no common and obvious building standards. Even when I freelanced for a company that specialised in flash banners there were no guidelines. So while I was working with their other designers in their office I’d open a file only to have to request them for a briefing on where things where and how/why they’d built it in such a fashion.

At this stage it’s important to note that I am just as guilty of all the above production issues and in no way pointing the finger. Many of the messiest creations were also the most impressive of ads. But this messy production is needs some attention. When I finish a job I want to know the next freelancer will be able to pick it up easily and without too much misunderstanding and vice versa.

In the last two years I must have produced over a couple of hundred flash banners (sorry everyone) so I’d like to make a few suggestions in the follow up post, some tips and tricks on how to make production a little bit friendlier for the freelancer who is coming in to pick up where someone else left off. These suggestions are not only for build standards but also for shortcutting different dimensioned creatives, cross platform delivery and making it friendly and understandable for designer developer workflow. Even if you don’t think anyone else is going to work on a project after you I think it’s still going to be a good idea to keep it clean and understandable for yourself. I have had the unfortunate pleasure of calling up previous designer/developers to get them to explain things over the phone for jobs they thought no-one would ever be working on again. Likewise, when I started I’ve had the to explain my own.

This is part 1 of a 3 part post. You can view part 2 here.