GoKawiil✍️ AI makes it fast and easy to copy what’s already out there. If you build products or run a business, your competitive edge is not necessarily features or price, it’s ideas. This means getting in the habit of inventing new things is more valuable than ever. And to explain how, let’s look back at a strange time for the web: the era of Flash.
Back in 2006, I worked at a tiny creative agency called Mutant Media, on 35th and 8th in Manhattan. We designed and built websites, motion graphics, print design, and a little something called microsites.
If you’re old enough to have lived through the Flash era, you remember a particular species of microsite: you’d be on a major brand’s website and there’d be a link that said something like “Launch Experience >>>” or “Enter Flash Site” and clicking on that would open up a fixed, 640x480 popup window (yeah) containing a Flash app.
Remember this movie? No, neither do I.
This Flash app would have some kind of fancy, eye-catching quasi-functionality, like allowing you to spin a sneaker around in “3D,” and there might be a low-fi music loop playing (mute button only if you’re lucky).
Believe me, y’all, this was the HEIGHT of web design in 2004
As another example, one of the many projects I worked on at that time was a Flash game for Bacardi where you mix Mojitos by dragging and dropping ingredients. The game had a bank of sound samples of a voice actor portraying the bartender and saying things like “Nice” and “It’s pronounced mo-hee-to.” Hahaha. Sorry, I don’t have a screenshot of this. I wish.
Who could forget!?
Whether you liked or hated Flash, this period of web development was nothing short of a creative explosion. At a glance:
1996: FutureSplash becomes Macromedia Flash
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