7 Design Trends For Flash Sites

People who use Flash for their web work are expected to be a developer and designer rolled into one. I would imagine 99% of our authors here do their own design and write their own ActionScript, as opposed to other web design work which can be done as is. For instance, you can’t just make a “skin” in Flash and sell it without functionality as you could a PSD file. It just won’t work.

If you’re hard pressed for ideas on what to use for a design feature here are 7 design trends that you can employ in your Flash templates, or any file for that matter, to add that touch of flair.

7 Design Trends For Flash Sites

1. Centered Simplicty – I’ve rarely gone “fullscreen” while visiting a website as I personally don’t like that functionality, except when it comes to video. Centering your content is a much more effective way of grabbing the attention of your visitor to garner a longer stay on the website.

2. Full Video Background - I know, I just said centered simplicity and now I’m saying full video background?! Well I did say “except when it comes to video”

Having full video backgrounds is a great way to immerse your visitor into the content. You will notice this trend mostly on sites that are showcasing a product.

3. Pictured Navigation – Rather than just boring old text how about a picture to tell you what to expect? This is best suited in 2 scenarios,

1. When you have a whole bunch of menu items and you want to draw attention to a few featured areas on your website
2. When you want to feature the main areas of your site, for instance if you want people to take some actions first and ask questions later.

4. Looks like HTML – Wow, I wonder which jQuery plugin they used to make that sweet dropdown! Let me just look at the code, oh! it’s in Flash! The best part about developing in Flash is that you do not need to add any extra code library, you just build it yourself for any effect you want.

Though, I have to say that sometimes crafting it in HTML/CSS is more creatively satisfying

5. Large Backgrounds – With ever increasing sales of large resolution monitors it’s only natural that you feel inclined to fill up the rest of that blank space. Large backgrounds are being used by many designers today and the trend looks to carry on for quite sometime to come.

At least until the mobile web takes over, then we’re all in deep trouble

The below examples are HTML based, but they give a good indication of what I’m refer to in this point.

6. Big Text, Icons and Illustrations – Small text was cool when 2advanced introduced it with v3 “Expansions” { or was it v2? }, but there is a noticeable shift in that trend and BIG is better today. From huge font sizes, to big icons and illustrations everything is just getting bigger, aesthetically of course.

Being vivid with typography along with the right mixture of icons and/or illustrations is what’s popular today. The below examples are HTML based again, I used them because they convey my point across well.

7. Multi column/Multi tabbed layouts – Providing more information in a multi-column or a multi-tabbed layout is something your visitor will thank you for under their breath. Attention span has been steadily decreasing over the years on the web and designers are taking note of that. They are trying to squeeze as much information as they can on one page, so that the oncoming traffic knows that something “more” is going on here.

Keeping a balance between showing enough content and not too much can be hard. The best way to reach a compromise is to take a step back from your system and see if everything makes sense to you. If you see that the most obvious calls to action and features of your website are conveyed from back there then you have succeeded.

Utilizing ongoing and emerging trends in your files here on FlashDen, or any other Envato marketplace, will ensure that you are seen as up to date and will obviously lead to more sales.

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