We’re all familiar with pointless Flash animations that serve only as barriers to getting to useful web content. But I recently stumbled across an instructive exampe of a “pointless” Flash animation that works.
It’s on the web site of the musician Adem:
http://www.adem.tv/site/
Why does it work? I see a few reasons, none of them mysterious and yet all of them frequently ignored:
- The animation is not an obstacle – it’s on the same page as the main content.
- But it’s designed to support, not compete with, that content.
- It’s light weight – Firefox’s Web Developer extension tells me the whole page is just 107 KB.
- It’s relevant to the site, expressing a sense of the artist’s identity.
- It’s delightful in its own right. I just like watching it go.
Achieving this kind of deceptively simple design balance makes all the difference – the same difference that distinguishes an iPod from an iPlod.
The Adem site is designed by worklesshard.