What? Is he crazy, you ask. How can a developer say such a thing. Their are umpteen reasons why I think design is important. Here are a few… Do you know any top agencies that have bad design? Do you want ugly work in your portfolio? Would apple be as successful as it is if it weren’t for those crafty designers they hire? Am I getting my point accross yet?

I am one of the lucky few who finds himself with a background in design. I actually have a Graphic Design degree and thank my lucky stars for it. Even the developer greats find themselves in a designers role (not a large one) from time to time. We all get asked to do things that don’t involve “for” loops or “if” statements. I also find myself animating a fair bit as well. You might say that is a designers role but their is somewhat of a bridge in our industry as Flash Developers. A bridge connecting the developer to the designer. We never completely cross it but we always have those moments where we come close to the middle.

I have found that with in my days as a Flash/Web Developer, their have been times when I lock myself in the development box and never come out. Life is usually quite boring in their if you stay in too long. My suggestion is to find some good resources that can give you inspiration or maybe just knowledge of what designers are doing. I like to look at some of David Carson’s work or even what there doing over at Juxt Interactive (its always creative) or just head over to the bookstore and checkout the latest design mag’s.

I tell you, it’s sure nice getting invited to brainstorming meetings with the creative team. You actually feel as though they care for your input and its nice starting a project from the beginning and not thrown in at the end with the instructions of “make our ideas work”. I have run into many developers who didn’t have much knowledge of the creative side of the industry and they had no real solid ideas because of that. Believe it or not they can, at times, even teach us a thing or two about flash. Who knew about using the color matrix filter to fade in an image from white would highlight different areas of an image, or even the benefits of using gradient masks. I just recently learned both of those working on the new Rolex website with some top notch designers.

Mainly, we just need to keep our eyes on the entire industry and not just on our tiny peice of land. Sure, it’s great and going up in value fast, but lets keep the creative juices flowing so we have something of value to add to the mix or else we will only create what we have seen in the past and won’t really find ourselves as innovators, just replicators.