Gareth Shapiro London Based Flex/AS3 Freelance Web Developer

If you have been following the posts on this blog you will know about a ”proof of concept” prototype I built for The Economist earlier in the year. This post is about the refinement of that work into online interactive content now published on The Economist website.

Due to business details behind this website I am unable to say for exactly which luxury fashion brand this work was for. It's a shame really because they are well known in UK and Europe for their dresses, suits, sunglasses and especially men and woman's perfume ranges.

On the plus side I had an amazing time working on this website with some really cool people. The Project Manager, Amell Benzerfa, on the job agreed to say some words about my work that I can share with you here....

The Economist put forward the idea that an interactive chart to display some of their data over different time spans would be a great piece of content for their website. What better technology is there for web based interactive charting than Flex? Especially when there are brilliant third party libraries of code developed to achieve just that, such as Flare.

The World in 2009 is the 23rd edition of The Economist's annual collection of predictions for the year ahead—with views from journalists, politicians and business people.

This year's edition has two interactive online pieces looking at Countries and Industries in 2009. I was responsible for all the Actionscript and PHP coding.

I am bound by a non disclosure agreement from disclosing the client this Flex work was produced for and so the agency, Tribeca, is listed here against this item.

The brief was to produce a rich media interface for a section of a content learning system for use by a global pharmaceutical company. Tribeca, the creative agency, came up with a great solution that works so well it has been used by the marketing department when delivering presentations in addition to the main purpose of being an interface to learning material.

In 2001 I begun delivering Actionscript training through a number of London commercial training providers, something that I continue to do to this day.

Polonetworks is a global membership organisation and central agency to the polo industry.

In 2008 they launched a social networking website to enhance the services offered to their worldwide membership base.

The British Heart Foundation ran an anti smoking campaign on UK television that was based on depicting, in graphic detail, what can happen to the arteries of smokers, by showing cigarettes dripping with fat. It was tough viewing but the advert drove record numbers of visitors to the charity's website. In order to continue this message, creative web content was created to engage visitors and provide the final piece of a campaign that begun with posters on the street.

Producing television advertising is a global business. An advertising production company may have their office in London while needing to show a new script to a director who is on location in Hong Kong. It is exactly because of this type of situation that Stink decided to make their current in-house system an online application. Essentially this is business software that is accessed using a web browser and is available to staff wherever they may be, provided they have an Internet connection.

McCann Erickson Worldwide Advertising is a globally experienced worldwide agency network with offices in over 130 countries and more than 75 years of global experience.

Leveraging global resources, and tapping into local expertise, has earned the agency "Global Agency of the Year" honours for 1998, 1999 and 2000 from Adweek magazine.

McCann is a subsidiary of the Interpublic Group of Companies, one of the four holding corporations that make up the advertising industry.