What do you get when you combine a few hardcore design enthusiasts with the thousands of impressive portfolios and Web sites of artists around the world? The American Design Awards (ADA).

Established in February of 2000 in San Diego, California, the ADA has two contests for graphic and Web designers of all experience levels - a monthly contest and an annual contest. The founders of the ADA were overwhelmed by the abundance of talent they observed when reviewing portfolios of prospective employees and decided to find a way to help these designers obtain the much-needed recognition that would perhaps help them in securing a career in the field of visual arts.

Today, ADA has over 20,000 active members and participants, from not only the United States, but also Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and South America, who have found the confidence and support to carry out their dreams, with the backing of ADA.

The annual contest is open to all kinds of entries, from Web design, logo design, complete corporate identity packages, marketing material, posters, packaging art, illustrations, and more. Any form of graphic or Web design has a place in the contest.

The monthly contest, however, is all about the Web, and is open only to actual Web sites. Between 1,200 and 1,500 sites are submitted each month and the top 5% are presented an award. There is no cost to enter the monthly competition.

Flash and the ADA
It stands to reason that since the monthly contest is open only to Web sites, you'll see a lot of Flash sites among the highest scorers. ADA is not a "Flash Web site" contest, but according to Kevin Javid of ADA, more than half of the sites scoring 90 or higher in the ADA competition use Flash to some extent. Although the team at ADA does specifically look for Flash in the design, according to Javid, "using it in a tasteful and creative manner certainly helps propel the score up by 5 to 10 points."

For Daniel J. Ferkul of Ravalink Corp. (January 2004 winner), Flash provided the freedom to envision a site and create it, without worrying about technology limitations. "Flash allowed us to create a site that was not static, but interactive...it gave us the opportunity to inhibit limitations in our vision and creation...time was our only limitation." In fact, Ravalink's site was done entirely in a few weeks by only one of the talented creatives. Even with an award-winning site, the creative minds at Ravalink won't stop there and are already looking forward to their next redesign. "As with anything we create, halfway through we are saying, ‘Man, I wish we could start over!' Oh, the way the creative mind works...we are never happy!" says Ferkul.

A key feature that attracts these artists to Flash is the integration of video in Flash, which can be just as much fun for the artist during the creative process as it is for the audience. Just ask Lee Walters, aka Lee Bones of lee.bones.com (January 2004 winner) about his first experience with video and Flash. "I went to a fabric store and purchased several yards of green fabric. The color of the fabric was very similar to the green fabric used for special effects (green screens) in TV and movies. I then hung the fabric up in my apartment, set up the video camera and lights, turned on the record player, and performed every stupid dance move I could think of. This was the first time I had tried anything with video and Flash together so it proved to be very fun!"

The use of Flash creates an extraordinary experience for Web site visitors and makes it pretty easy for designers and developers to ensure that users will see the sites as intended. "Since Flash is cross-platform, as long as the user has the latest Flash plug-in, we don't have to worry about browser compatibility issues like alignment and fonts. This allows us to explore new interface designs and layouts," says Amie LaRocque of Sumo Creative Services (March 2004 winner). And with the Flash player installed on more than 97% of Internet-enabled desktops, it's a good bet that users will see the site just as the artist envisioned.

From a development standpoint, Flash is a winner as well. Quentin Fountain of omegaDawn grafix (April 2004 winner) says, "We wanted to develop a site that was extremely user friendly, easy on the eyes, simple yet still exciting to use. And from an internal development standpoint, we wanted something that would be easier to develop and maintain than our previous site. With the use of Flash and its ability to work with PHP, XML, and MySQL, this was extremely easy." And it's only going to get better with the enhancements introduced in Flash MX 2004. "We're seeing a great deal of sophisticated and intricate Flash animations as well as seemingly faster loading pages. We are also finding a good deal of functionality and customization that allows for the user to interact with an otherwise ordinary interface," says Javid.

Many of the artists featured here chose Flash for similar reasons, but when asked about their inspiration, they gave answers as varied as the sites themselves, ranging from their company's branding, to a new challenge, to their "favorite things." Thousands upon thousands of artists are using the same technology, for largely the same reasons, to create a very unique representation of themselves and their work. Says Walters, "I didn't want to make something that wasn't me...because I was selling me." The images on the following pages here are accompained by statements from the artists about what inspired them, and the URL so that you can, of course, get the full experience.

If they inspire you to enter your own site, all the better. When asked to provide some advice for newer designers, Javid had this to say: "Balance! Balance is very important not only in colors and layout, but also in Flash. Sometimes less is more and unless properly planned, ‘more' can lead to a Web site's being too busy and cluttered, unfriendly to the user, and to most modern users, slow and cluttered."

And Romain Gruner (December 2003 winner) puts it very simply: "To succeed in this business we need to be better or different. I choose the difference."

To learn more about the ADA, please visit www.americandesignawards.com.

ADA Criteria
Each design piece is graded based on the degree of creativity (30 points), design potential (40 points), and originality of idea (30 points). Based on the final grade received, the contestant will receive:

1. Platinum Award: This award is presented to the top 5% of our designers, with a score of 90-100.
2. Gold Award: Presented to designers who score between 80 and 89 on our judging score sheet.
3. Silver Award: Presented to designers who score between 70 and 79 on our judging score sheet.