Design plus animation equals ‘design-imation’
February 16th, 2006, By Ovi Demetrian Jr
Macromedia Adobe Flash continues to bring a lot to the web in form of interactivity and animation, which seems to be in demand more and more recently. Since I started using Flash, the ability that attracted me most was the use of animation.
We’ve seen all kinds of animation on the web done in Flash. Online applications have been built using animation and interactivity for improved usability. That is starting to show now in other ways with the AJAX approach doing basically the same thing but in a different way. At the same time cartoons on TV are being developed in Flash and is leading the way for traditional animation in a digital world.
This shows how Flash’s animation capabilites can be very powerful in two completely different areas. There is another area that hasn’t been getting as much attention as it did a few years ago but is starting to make a comeback — presentational animation. Or as I like to call it, design-imation since it’s basically making a creative piece move in simple ways for the purpose of adding more to the visual design.
It used to be a big on the web to have a Flash intro for a website with all the effects that Flash could handle in order to impress visitors coming to the site. However, a lot of websites found that the intro was in some ways a waste of time for the visitor to get to the main page of the site. And with the development of applications with Flash, attention from design and using animation seemed to be pushed aside. Ads are still out on the web, but a lot of those being replace with text-based ads.
The way ‘designimation’ is making a comeback though is through mediums other than the desktop computer. When I went to Europe last year, I remember seeing Flash animation being used on buses. At CES last month, I saw a few products being presented with Flash presentations as video since it was a simpler approach than using complex video-editing software. It also allowed for the product to be explained better by showing animated diagrams of how it worked.
This is how Flash will continue to have more of an impact in design and advertising. Times Square and Las Vegas will soon be Flash-based. And the ‘flashy’ advertising of the future sci-fi movies have been showing us could be a reality made by possible with Flash software.
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Tags: animation, flash, presentations
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