It's days like this that help me get over my worries that I"m not a good graphic designer.

My friend Joseph works for an airline in the States. It's his job to create those computer base training modules, so that pilots can refresh / learn their stuff. He is a pilot himself, not a graphic designer. He can, however, manage through okay. But what does he do when he hits a block and cannot work through it?

He asks me.

Today he needed a flash box, that he could update the text it, and it would scroll. Kinda like the iframes of internet yore, the ones that I loved so much. Plop the box in, pick your size, type in your text, and away you go.

Unfortunately for Jos, he doesn't know Flash. Doesn't even have Flash on his computer. So how could he make a box like this, without knowing a bit of action script.

So he fires me an email. While I always assumed I was crap at Flash (despite the fact that my Online design portfolio is completely Flash based).

I have never made a scrolly iframe type box in flash before.

So I dig out ye-ol tutorials. Turns out to be easy enough.

The tricky part?

Make the text work dynamically so all Jos has to do is plop the text into a word file and voila! Magic scrolly text box.

Dusting the filing cabinet in the brain off, I remember actually doing dynamic text in class. And video. And pictures. Do I remember how? Just.... hardly.

And what do you know? I managed to get it to work :D So now I feel all warm and fuzzy inside that I don't suck completely.

Yes I am probably silly for having such low esteem when it comes to my own creativity, but I will take whatever small steps I can. I know I can do this. I mean, look at my blog? It was several hours of work figuring out layers and textures and all that, but it's beeaaauuutiful (except if you use internet explorer, but that is because IE sucks).

So yes, I am a good designer. I just need to smarted up and do a better job at taking days like these to heart.

And now he tells me he needs it in actionscript 2 instead of 3... joy.

Labels: rambles