My first project for the ad agency, Dixon Schwabl Advertising, was a Flash-based microsite for a private K-12 school, Allendale Columbia. We called it ACAnswers and it featured a series of questions that were answered in the form of video testimonials by current students, alumni, and parents of students. The idea behind the site was to reach each of these segments and help relate the benefits of the school in a way where the audience can connect with the folks who have experience with the school.
What I Did
I entered into this project as a contractor, and over the course of about a week I took the Photoshop-based design and created this Flash-based website. The video clips were already shot and edited, so I created thumbnails and built out the homepage and each of the answer pages. I believe there were only two Movie Clips (in Flash terms) and the pages were programmatically created, but to be honest, at this time it’s possible we duplicated the answer pages and edited them by hand.
This project launched in 2007, then in 2008 a new set of videos were uploaded as the campaign was updated for another round.
Fin
This project was my foot in the door at DS. The single web developer that worked there at this time was a college professor of mine and he did a lot of work to kick off several web development projects, but before implementing them all he decided working at an agency wasn’t for him. He recommended the agency split his salary and hire me and a dedicated web designer to take all of the new business he had gotten and to carry those projects across the finish line.
I remember getting the call that the agency wanted to bring me on full-time and I remember it was exciting and I was very thankful for my professor for recommending me. I was being brought in as a Flash and HTML specialist as the agency began its journey to build out its web development team.
A couple of weeks later the check for this project arrived in the mail and I remember—now having steady income in reach—I went to the Apple Store to purchase my first iPhone. Little did I know where that would take me.