Studio Exploration - BACKFLIP LTD

Backflip Ltd. is a UK-based company responsible for the design and construction of rich internet applications. They work primarily in Flash, but also utilize CSS, HTML, PHP and other tools to put their sites together. Their past clients include major British news network BBC as well as Aardman Animation, the creators of Wallace and Gromit; I'll come back and give you some samples of their work once we get further into the exploration.

One of the things that got me interested in Backflip is that none of their projects seem "normal." Each of them has its own unique artistic style. They have tried out a number of flashy interfaces, many of them making much use of CS4's new 3D tools. Even though a few of these interfaces do feel a bit difficult to use, it's cool that Backflip isn't afraid to risk new ideas, and sometimes they strike gold. They are working on an interactive book project for BBC called BBC Subtext, and if it turns out the way they plan, it could well be one of the coolest sites on the web.

And now for some project reviews. I picked out one that I didn't care for and one that I liked, to balance things out.

Wildlife Gallery is a site Backflip developed for Adobe in order to showcase Flash Player 10's 3D functionality. It's basically a picture and video viewer, showing various animals categorized under mammals, reptiles, fish, and so on. A standard text navigation panel on the right allows you to pick a starting point, but you can also drag the line of frames around in 3D space and click any of them to shoot forward. The color scheme is random, so if you hit F5 you might for example see all mammals labeled orange and all reptiles blue. These features look cool, but end up being somewhat gimmicky; this was one of Backflip's projects that I didn't like so much. Even though the main point was the use of 3D and not the actual content of the site, I would have preferred to see Flash's abilities showcased in ways that make things more intuitive, such as in their upcoming project BBC Subtext.

The second project I looked at was Me and My Health, a media viewing interface designed for BBC to help them spread awareness of health issues. I liked the light feel of the interface, the gradient background and the playful font. All the videos are loaded dynamically, so even though the site is hosted in the UK, the load times aren't too bad. All the movies are sorted by category, and once you pick a category, thumbnails of each clip appear along the bottom. I like how hovering the mouse over a thumbnail causes a preview to play; it makes me feel like I'm interacting with a living site, instead of browsing static thumbnails. Clicking on a thumbnail opens up the main movie, as well as providing some common options like "email to a friend" and "related links." All in all, this site shows how Flash can be used simply and effectively to enhance a viewers experience, while Wildlife Gallery shows the downside of using flashy elements just because they're available.