New ID / New Site
by , (5 comments)
I wanted to take the time to introduce myself as this is my first post. My name is Jake Stutzman and I live in Hastings, NE. I work for a company in Nashville, TN, which happens to be the subject of this post.
For many years the company I work for has been known as ‘Davidbean.net’. Well, with the addition of me as an employee and a new vision for bigger and better things, we created a new identity which communicates our thinking on a more global level. The previous name/ID was that of a freelance designer or small local company, now we’ve become ‘The Visual Reserve,’ which has allowed us to reach larger scale clientele.
The goal was to come up with a name that would portray us as a high end agency with lots of experience, maturity, and definite quality. In addition, the name was to communicate what we do without relying on a tagline, etc. The solution was ‘The Visual Reserve.’ The governmental reference in the name, although subtle, allows for some mystery, as well as a level of sophistication and reverence that is often given to the government.
We just launched the website last friday (10-1) which is a powerful tool for us to communicate with our current clients as well as future/potential clients. The site is all flash and uses our patented content management system to update. The entire site runs directly from the database using flash remoting and php. This allows us to present up-to-date information as well as keep our portfolio fresh as new projects are finished.
Comments (5)
Adrian said:
Jake, welcome aboard. I like your site. Maybe the money references will subconsciously persuade your clients to pay you more! I know you are a big Flash fan, so that should make for some good discussion. Perhaps we can persuade you to write some tutorials. I am not saying give the secrets of your “Governor” system, but maybe you could share some of the tricks you learned outside of all the hit-and-miss online sources. Out of curiosity, are you writing all the actionscript yourself, or do you have a programmer? I know that a bunch of agencies leave the html coding to programmers and the designers just send them slices of graphics. I don’t have that luxury, but in Flash it seems like designers need to know the programming in order to get things to work the way they are supposed too. Running a site off PHP seems like a lot to expect from a designer, though. What do you think?
Posted on October 4, 2004
Jake Stutzman said:
Yeah..i did all the actionscripting myself. That’s where the true power of flash comes out. Yeah…animations are pretty, and flashing/fading pictures are neat too…but when you can use flash to build a true web application that can deliver up-to-date information to the user without having to wait for page refreshing or the use of frames, you begin to learn that you’re providing a better user experience for your audience, not just a bunch of moving and flickering distractions.
I am a big fan of flash, but it is misused a lot of the time, and therefore people have grown to hate it. Things like the dreaded ‘flash intro’ or other gratuitous animations cause the user to leave the site early instead of prompting them to interact with or explore the site.
Posted on October 4, 2004
Paul Berkbigler said:
Excellent and elegant site design and navigation on this, Jake - great to see you harnessing actionscript and injecting your design personality into it. The flow through the site was wonderfully fluid and seamless, and the splashes of transitionary animations were all very well integrated into the piece.
Just another example of how the script really gives you the keys to the kingdom when it comes to Flash - another suitable kick in the butt to learn the coding better and rely on it more heavily.
I’m somewhat curious which collection of scripting books you have on your shelves and / or where you found the best education in working on the code side of the spectrum.
Thanks for sharing your work with us.
Posted on October 8, 2004
Jake Stutzman said:
Paul…thanks for the compliments. I definitely agree when it comes to scripting. I find myself getting frustrated if I have to hard-code anything these days. Most of the sites i build are completely dynamic, from navigation to content. On the Visual Reserve site, I can change anything on the site in 2 secs.
Anyways, all my education scripting-wise is all trial and error. The most helpful book I’ve purchase is the MM Training from the source books: Actionscript. This whole series of books is very helpful. Its hands on learning, you basically go through various projects that tackle the most frequently used features of actionscript. I just used to do like one chapter every saturday, til i learned everything in the book. Then i get a harder book. I have the Application Development version in the series now, but I haven’t had a ton of time to go through it like i want to.
Posted on October 8, 2004
Jake Stutzman said:
Paul…thanks for the compliments. I definitely agree when it comes to scripting. I find myself getting frustrated if I have to hard-code anything these days. Most of the sites i build are completely dynamic, from navigation to content. On the Visual Reserve site, I can change anything on the site in 2 secs.
Anyways, all my education scripting-wise is all trial and error. The most helpful book I’ve purchase is the MM Training from the source books: Actionscript. This whole series of books is very helpful. Its hands on learning, you basically go through various projects that tackle the most frequently used features of actionscript. I just used to do like one chapter every saturday, til i learned everything in the book. Then i get a harder book. I have the Application Development version in the series now, but I haven’t had a ton of time to go through it like i want to.
Posted on October 8, 2004