 Designers' Comments
DESIGN ARMY
For a studio working in both print and new media, Flash Catalyst was a journey into uncharted territory. Armed with a few days of tinkering and tech support, we proceeded to push the limits and capabilities of the program. At first, the smooth transition from an Adobe® Illustrator® CS5 mock-up into a Flash Catalyst project allowed us to move at a quick pace...But there were plenty of hurdles along the way. File sizes, loading times, computer freezes, and complete unfamiliarity with Flex coding forced the team to be as ingenious as Wonderland itself, discovering new ways to work with Flash Catalyst to create a piece both technically impressive and visually stunning. Even within the strict constraints of the program, we show that a constraint can be inspiring, and a tool for beginners can have surprising depth: the proof is in the presentation.
TRIBORO
Buttons (a.k.a pins) are fun! We make them for friends and clients whenever we can. The format has an uncanny ability to make almost any graphic engaging and cute, but being a static object a button is limited to making a single graphic statement.
When we were encouraged by Adobe and Print to use Flash Catalyst for a project we decided to set our buttons free from the confines of an analog format. As a continuation of our ongoing Triboro Leftovers initiative, we chose 77 of our favorite button designs and gave them new life as a series of interactive animations.
We can imagine interactive buttons as a favored medium for communication. In a physical form (mini-LCD screens) buttons could have tremendous potential as digital canvases to display personal statements, graphic expressions and even simple narratives—all while pinned on a sweater!
Adobe Flash Catalyst offered an intuitive workspace for making this leap from analog to digital. With its strong link to the graphic capabilities of Adobe Flash® and Adobe Photoshop®, Flash Catalyst was easy to integrate into our creative process and workflow. Assets from our archives could be quickly imported and staged to the web within hours.
NICHOLAS FELTON
I thought that Flash Catalyst would be an easy way to add interactivity and publish it to the web, but this wasn't exactly the case... My biggest problem with the application applies to the whole category of proxy apps, and is probably why I don't use them. Whether writing code or drawing in Illustrator, nothing gets added to the file unless you put it there....Flash Catalyst tries to be so helpful that it creates transitions automatically for every item that changes and every possible state change. Once I learned to accept that I was going to have stray objects appearing and disappearing from the timeline I made faster progress. But I wish I could just mark the objects I wanted to change, and leave the rest of them in a static state throughout the composition.
I'm not sure how I would have created this [project] otherwise, but I know that if I had coded it, I could have done more. I would have liked to make the buttons switches so that you could turn on everything, or some of the publishers or none. In code, I would just tell each of those buttons to turn on or off and could have achieved any state quite quickly. Flash Catalyst appears to be transition focussed, so I had to tweak every possible transition to get it working properly.
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From print to web in a flash: Working with Flash Catalyst
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by Print admin
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To introduce you to a new world of design possibilities, Print and Adobe asked some of their favorite designers to convert their static print work to fully interactive projects—without writing code!—by using Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5 , part of Adobe Creative Suite® 5 Design Premium. Simply click on the images below to watch them come to life.
Design Army / Washington, D.C. Ballet Booklet  CLICK HERE TO SEE DESIGN ARMY'S WORK COME TO LIFE
About Wonderland
In 2009, Design Army collaborated with photographer Cade Martin and the Washington Ballet to create Wonderland, a one-of-a-kind book highlighting a decade of great works presented by the company. With 40 dancers performing in locations throughout Washington D.C., the commemorative book is a truly unique blend of art and fashion that took the D.C. area by storm. After the success of Wonderland, the studio wanted the book to come alive and tell the story of its creation — from concept and design to photography and art direction. To do this, they turned to Adobe & Flash Catalyst CS5.
Design Army is an award-winning graphic design studio located in Washington, D.C., founded by Jake and Pum Lefebure. Their multi-disciplinary work has appeared in Print, HOW, Graphis, and many other publications and across the web.
Triboro / 77 Web Buttons  CLICK HERE TO SEE TRIBORO'S WORK COME TO LIFE
Triboro is the husband and wife team of David Heasty and Stefanie Weigler. Triboro creates design solutions for clients in publishing, art, fashion, music, lifestyle, and for cultural institutions.Triboro’s partners have won numerous industry awards and their work has been featured in publications and exhibitions around the world.
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