Last year saw an ever increasing need for skilled flash developers and designers within digital production. In general most would qualify themselves as one or the other with even Adobe splitting out it’s community resources online.

“However with standard agency teams split into creative and technical where should a flash developer or designer actually sit?”

Traditionally, a creative team would headed up by a Creative Director then structured with Art Directors, Senior Designers, Junior Designers, Senior and Junior Copywriters and Content Producers  and perhaps an intern to make the coffee. A Technical or Development team would mirror this and be led by a Technical Director, Senior Developers and Junior Developers with a myriad of skills across platforms and technologies.

But if your Senior Designer is also a mean actionscripter would it not be beneficial to sit them with the rest of the developers?

I once witnessed the experiment of rotating the designers and developers within an agency so that a few of the senior designers were pod swapped with senior developers. Interestingly, the senior designer did not see much difference (other than the noise level being zero as compared to the creative pod). The senior developer who was exchanged only lasted 3 days. You could argue it also depends on team culture and personalities.

Traditional agencies always mention silos and not working within them but flash development is definitely an area where the specialists should not be separated as often decisions in design will affect specifications and programming and vice versa.

With the maturity in the marketplace and entire agencies being founded on Flash and new releases of Adobe Flash, Adobe Air and Flex providing better features and creative opportunities, maybe flash developers and designers should form their own teams that bridge both creative and technical teams and skillsets…….