I had the fortunate experience to talk with Dave Marro, Associate Art Director at Nickelodeon's interactive department, Nickonline in New York City. Dave is a good friend of mine and an exceptionally good flash designer and coder. He has helped me out numerous times with interactive projects and coding problems. He is extremely dedicated to his work and loves being a part of the exciting interactive world. Here is what he had to say.
Q. What do you do at Nickelodeon?
A. I’m primarily a Flash designer spending about 99% of my time using Flash. That time is split pretty evenly between design and programming within Flash if not more time programming.
Q. Which do you prefer more, programming or designing?
A. I love them both to be honest and I think that it’s important to do both because they go together. When you're working on interface design you really can't have one with out the other anymore. I started out just strictly design but just picked up more and more code as I went along because I saw the necessity for it.
Q. So, you're self-taught in programming?
A. Yes. I bought books, read up on it, experimented, hacked around with code that I could find online.
Q. How did you get involved in interactive design?
A. I really just stumbled upon it. I was attending the Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.) in New York studying advertising/graphic design and a woman who was attending with me was working on the Marvel Comics web site at the time and kept pushing me to intern there. I didn't want to at first because I didn't know anything about HTML or web design but time was running out and I needed to complete an internship in order to graduate. So I decided to take it. Then I had a Macromedia Director class and really liked the interactive part of it. We were making interactive games and CD-ROMs and really enjoyed that much more then the print stuff I was doing.
Q. Is Director being used any more?
A. It’s still around but I think Flash has taken a lot of its market space. Flash does a lot of what it used to do exclusively. I think it’s used a lot for CD-ROMs and more real software development but its being used less and less.
Q. What types of projects do you work on?
A. I've increasingly been working on Web Applications. Right now it seems to me that whole web is going application based and Flash has a lot to do with that. With the introduction of Action Script 3 and CS3 you can basically make desktop applications that run over the web.
Q. How does that work? The web program would work in conjunction with the desktop program?
A. Adobe has a new program called AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) that seems to merge desktop applications and web applications. It’s the next big thing they are promoting. I think we are going to be doing a lot of projects based around this new technology. From what I know it allows to drag and drop web applications to your desktop that still function and communicate as though they were on the web still.
Q. Do you have the ability to use all the technologies of the new Web 2.0?
A. Here, we are all about video and new technologies that are coming out. We've got a good group here that as soon as something comes out we want to get into it; we want to find out about it. We're currently working on a project that is utilizing the new AS3 and Flex; we just really enjoy utilizing the new technologies.
Q. What makes a project exciting for you?
A. Projects tend to be exciting for me in the beginning, when they are wide open creatively. After about 5 months of the same project I'm so sick of it, I can't stand it anymore. It’s the life cycle of the project. At the start you're so optimistic about what it could be but realistically 9 times out of 10 at the end you're just crunching to get things done by the deadline. I love the creative beginnings of projects where it's wide open and you can experiment.
Q. Being the Art Director do you work on the projects from start to finish or do manage and work on the higher creative part and delegate out the pieces to people under you?
A. The idea is that I work on the top level and then delegate out the pieces and that happens but here it seems that you have to stay involved with the project from start to finish. There are projects that I did 3 or 4 years ago that people still ask me to update or fine tune. It seems like you can never get rid of projects here. But the ideal scenario is that I do my part then delegate out the rest.
Q. Do you feel that new Web Standards, use of grids and strict hierarchy is making the web look the same and as a result becoming boring and standard?
A. Personally I think the trick is to find ways to customize the design because increasingly everything is becoming modular. Especially with some of the new technology like Adobe Flex. Flex is so modular, technically it's tabs in a grid but what were doing is customizing it so far that you would never know that it's just tabs in a grid. The key is to really dig around in the code and fully customize what's available. The great thing though is that things are becoming much more automated making it quicker and easier to put together a page in an application but at the same time really pushing the customization so you don't end up with a grid that looks like every other grid out on the web.
Q. Is this where knowing code really helps, to be able to did around a CSS file or any other language and customize?
A. Yes. It really works hand in hand. You really need a designer who understands the limitations of software and can work with in the context of what's available but you need a programmer who is willing to stretch that out and creatively find ways to adapt to what's available. That's why I think it’s important to learn and understand a little bit of both so that you can help with the process on both ends.
Q. Taking from that thought, to be a successful web designer you don't need to be an expert designer and coder do you?
A. Right. Most of our designers here don't write any code and I think that’s okay. I think the project turns out a lot better though when you can at least give some direction as far as interaction with in the design to the programmers. The real key, especially in Flash, is to deliver to the programmers the assets in the way they need them. Understanding how to keep the design clean and the functionality clear for the programmer to take it from you and run with it is the most important thing to know but that doesn't mean you have to be an expert in code and write it your self.
Q. Do you think interactive media is going to take over and phase out print media?
A. I don't think so. I was here when the bottom fell out and everyone thought the web was going to die. It's pretty clear now that it's here to stay. What's exciting to me is the way technologies are merging, your T.V., phone, and internet are starting to work together and now Flash is starting to be used to make interfaces for ATM machines. I think its going to keep moving that direction where interactive branches out into new places beyond the internet. The possibilities are endless, there's no telling where it's going to go in the next decade, and it’s exciting.
Q. In terms of the web, what's the most exciting technology development you've seen?
A. Its Flash every step of the way. Every time there is a new release its so much more robust, you can do so many different things with it right now. The way it interacts with back-end technologies and XML you can really do anything you want to do with Flash right now. That’s just me though. I know there is other new technologies out there but I really just use flash. If I were working somewhere else my answer may be something different. But for now, for me, it's definitely Flash.
Q. What has been the biggest change in Flash for you?
A. The release of CS3 and AS3. Timeline scripting and putting movies together in timelines has pretty much become a thing of the past. Now it's all separate stand alone SWF's and modules that get put together by the code. Basically the main movie has one line of code that initializes the main class and then with in that it initializes all the classes associated with that and compiles all the needed SWF's and other elements into the library of the main movie. Timeline animation is still used but that's all it is, animation. There is no code or communication happening from the timeline anymore.
Q. How much faster does that allow the SWF's to work online?
A. It allows you to load in the pieces as you need them as opposed to the old way where everything associated with the movie needed to be loaded in before the movie could even start. So with the new way you have much better control over loading objects as you need them making the load time and user experience much better.
Q. How do you feel about blogging?
A. I’m indifferent to it. I guess probably because I work for a kids site where we can't really let kids exchange personal information. It's not something I'm actively involved in but I think it's great for people who are but it's not really for me right now.
Q. So you don't think setting up a blog for an 8 year old would be a good idea?
A. (Laughs) No. Here we try to emulate a lot of the stuff that older kids can do online but we have to do it so carefully that we really have to water it down. We have message board at our Nicktropolis site where kids can talk to each other and it has a chat but we had to pre-can words because we can let kids type what ever they want. Also we can't have even a remote possibility for the kids to write something personal. So we had to come up with interfaces that allowed content to be shared that was with in our guidelines of acceptable content.
Q. Is a lot of time spent on securing personal information from being shared between the kids on each project?
A. It didn't used to be but now with the big buzz being User Generated content like You Tube we put a lot of focus on it since each project is dealing more and more with user interaction and user generated content. We have a section in Turbonick where kids can upload their own videos, a site called Mynick where kids can customize their own web site add in Nicktropolis and security has become huge. It’s a very important part to the whole process. We have meetings, discussions, groups of specialists and a dictionary of words that kids can use. Security has become huge now.
Q. What are you using for reference material if you're stuck with broken code or an application is working right?
A. I used to use Flash Kit a lot but now what I find to be the most effective thing is Google. I just type in some keywords on my problem for example, type in movie clip, action script and it comes back with a bunch of results that I can use to help fix the problem. It's a really quick and easy way to fix things.
Q. Even though you work for Nickelodeon you do work for other clients?
A. We work for MTV networks that is a part of Viacom so all the groups with in Viacom we will potentially do work for.
Q. What do you think is the most important thing for a web design student to learn?
A. I think the most important thing to learn is to understand that you need to keep learning and be willing to do that. You can never get complacent or think you're in a good place and stop learning because you'll get left behind in two minutes. I personally think it’s very important to be well rounded and have a good understanding of code and design. If you can do that you'll be set-up really well to have a secure career.
Q. Is there any other advice you would have for students or new professionals?
A. Keep up on what's new. Be prepared to do a lot of research and learning on new technologies on your own time. Drink a lot of coffee (laughs). One important thing is to have good communication skills to be able convey your idea and design to other people, especially programmers.
Many thanks to Dave for all the great insights to the professional interactive field. It was great to get a behind the scenes look at what is going on now and what the future holds for this ever evolving filed.
Education | Reference, Art | Thought Process, Opinon
