Art and Flash

I've just come across two interesting Flash sites showcasing artists' work.

The first, Ron Berg Photography, is essentially a simple yet clever gallery site for this distinguished photographer. The design makes use of vertical scrolling, strange for a Flash site, however it works well, with the words taking second place, and second space, to the gorgeous pictures.

Other clever Flash elements are incorporated without fanfare -- as it should be -- each fitting perfectly in its context. The site design and interface as a whole has a smooth, clean feel to it, and the copy gives it all quite a character: he's a photographer, so "just look at the pretty pictures man". Love it.

The second site is Encore Magazine, one of three online mag's from MagWerk, a German design house, sponsored by heavyweights Sony and Diesel. An extremely cool "art and design"-focussed offering, the interface comprises a magazine lying open on grass, with birds merrily chirping in the background, as you may find on a lazy summer's day. Pages of the mag house the site content, and a subtle bottom navigation bar allows the reader to move around within it.

The content here is excellent, featuring cutting-edge and upcoming artists from various media in a magazine-style layout enhanced with Flash for animation, interactivity and interest. The future of magazines? Possibly -- this would surely be cheaper to create than a printed version, and with the web, your market becomes limitless.

One small gripe -- they make use of a Flash technique that Juxt has been employing for ages -- allowing the user to "turn pages" by clicking the page corners -- but they don't do it as well as Juxt, who also add a drag functionality to their works so you can drag the page across -- as quickly or as slowly as you'd like -- by pulling on the corner, as well as by clicking it.

That said, however, the main navigation is great. I love the gelling of preloader with navigation, which works really well here, and the fact that it is down the bottom, out of the way of the pages and the meat of the mag.

It's a pity, then, that the bottom navigation only takes us to page 82, while the net mag's last page is actually on 102. Poor planning there, the nav needs to be scalable to be completely usable.

Overall though, Encore Mag is refreshing and entertaining. Issue #2 hits the web October 2nd. Definitely worth watching out for.