The Rise of the Flashists.
Remember Flash? That quirky animation tool? You know, the one that took over the Internet and then just disappeared? It seems nobody likes it anymore. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that Flash is a dirty word.
Picture the scene. A creative review. We’ve sold the idea. We now need a campaign website. And then, I utter those immortal words “how about we build it in Flash?” The room falls silent. The looks of horror, disgust and confusion (mainly from the interns) shoot across the meeting room. It appears our industry is full of Flashists.
So what has Flash done to deserve such treatment? Firstly, we must remember the brand websites we used to build in Flash. Often they were huge, expansive 3D worlds full of vector-based wonder. Flash allowed us the canvas to be creative. So we used it; whether our audience really wanted it or not. And with this came large file sizes, and therefore tedious loading times. In fact, the websites got so large often there were mini-games created to while away the time whilst you were waiting! Oh, the arrogance…
But we can’t point the finger solely at loading times. Steve Jobs must take a (rather large) proportion of the blame. Apple, for many political reasons, decided that allowing a flash player embedded within their mobile (and subsequently tablet) browser wasn’t going to happen. It never had a chance.
You would have thought that if Flash websites don’t work on Apple devices then that type of rich, immersive (and often self indulgent) brand experience would have died out with it. Well you’d be wrong. It appears our marketing microsites are becoming more and more like the Flash websites of old. And do you know how I can tell? The loader bar is back!!
If we’ve returned to building these experiences again, what’s changed? Well it could be that brands don’t have anything interesting to say. Or at least no interesting content to share. So instead we wow our audiences with digital animated delights. “Hey Jeff, if we make our website look cool enough maybe people will share it with their friends and forget that we don’t have anything of any real interest to say!”
That, however, would be the cynic’s view. As an industry we get that Content is King. That’s what the people want to see, and share. The main concern is that our good ideas/great content will be released and immediately struggle to compete for attention in the already overpopulated digital world.
We have the content. We now need to give it the platform it deserves. We need to make it stand out from the crowd. Present it in the best possible light. And this is where the Creative Technologists and Digital Designers step in. They are once again tasked to create immersive ‘experiences’ - but they can’t use Flash. (It’s not trendy, remember?) Fear not! Waiting to emerge from that gloomy Flash-shaped shadow are our old favourites - HTML, CSS and JavaScript. And they’ve brought supplies - lightweight libraries full of optimized code. And they’re free! And they work on iPhones! And iPads!
What this allows us to do is recreate the Flash experience. But we’ve accidently fallen into a design trap. The trap of ‘responsive design’. (Which also happens to be my favourite buzzword of 2013.) Some bright spark worked out that if we only built the website once, but built it ‘responsively’, then it could work on ALL devices! Hallelujah! The client would be happy (cost savings) and the agencies would be happy (dreaming that perhaps we might actually make that 20% margin on a project).
So we have the content. AND we have a way to present it that is cost effective and works across all formats. But what we’ve done is forgotten the most important people – the audience. What do they want? Well, what they don’t want is a website that works in exactly the same way whether they’re viewing on a mobile, a tablet or their desktop. We’ve delivered for the lowest common denominator. We’ve forgotten the context.
We should be delivering an experience that is relevant to our audience dependent on the type of device they are choosing to consume our content.
Which all means that we should be creating rich experiences specifically for desktop consumption. We should be thinking about how the experience should differ dependent on device (and therefore context); how the content should be displayed, what content is more relevant and what is completely useless.
So with this in mind I think we should be considering Flash as an alternative. Technology is not inherently good or evil; it’s just how we choose to use it. Let’s be brave enough to suggest Flash if we believe it’s right. So stop being a Flashist. Now…
Rob Meldrum
Innovation Director UK
@rcmeldrum
