One thing I can say about Flash design / development – was that those who had a passion for it, have a passion to be inspirational. I know when I first began designing in flash, I was drawn to it because of it the creative liberty.
As I mentioned yesterday, with the advent of Apple’s decisions and HTML5 Flash is a dying art, but I wonder if people will be as passionate about HTML5 as they were about Flash.
I doubt it.
Why? Because Flash seemed to flow out of people who loved design and story telling – not writing code. Though of course people who now work with Flash code as well – I don’t think that is the average candidate. I recall hearing an interview of Hillman Curtis – one of my original Flash heros. He no longer does anything in flash. Rather video. (In my understanding) He explained that flash turned into a programmers tool instead of designers tool.
So anyway, the question is – are there any inspirational designs out there? Are they all made from non-iPhone friendly Flash and take 3 minutes to load?
Well, I’m not going to offer any answers but I did want to list 4 of my favorite places to see inspirational design:
1. THE FWA
To me this is the place to get the best of a best – flash or flash-ish designs… Cutting edge. The latest and greatest from the best of the best.
2. Webby Awards
This the classic corporate sponsored national awards site for website design. What I like about is it’s diversity. You can select through multiple category and types like : Fashion, Media and blog, etc.
3. Ministry CSS
Ministry CSS is a gallery of church, missions and ministry websites. Even though it seems like 90% of it’s selection come from one company, I still like to go there whenever I’m going to design a non-profit and church website.
4. Smashing Magazine
Smashing Magazine is not a simple gallery like the rest, but rather a blog. The cool thing about it, is that you see styles and trends for various countries or years. You can see inspirational navigation menus or call to action buttons. It’s not just websites, but sub-sections or the components that make websites awesome to see and use and sell stuff.
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