The Century Council, in partnership with Sports Illustrated for Kids, called on us to design and develop the asklistenlearn.com website. The goal of the site is to encourage and educate kids 8-13 to “Say ‘Yes’ to a healthy lifestyle, and ‘No’ to underage drinking.” Our approach: to build a community by rewarding kids who pledge to avoid alcohol with “Ask, Listen, Learn Team” status. In Q&A features, “Superstar” athletes, like Apolo Anton Ohno and Dara Torres, deliver straight talk about alcohol.

 The decision not to drink is presented as part of an overall healthy lifestyle rather than using the "just say no" approach. Because the focus has changed and because The Century Council’s partner is now Sports Illustrated for Kids, we needed to rebrand the campaign to be more sports-oriented.

Once kids have taken the pledge, they are part of the Ask, Listen, Learn Team and can tell stories about what makes them unique on their profile pages. The profile is displayed in a baseball-card-style collectible, which they can customize with their picture and update with details about their favorite subjects, sports, or community activities. Registered team members earn “virtual medals” which are displayed on their profile page each time they play the games, a feature that gives them an incentive to dig deeper, learning more with each play.

check out this project >

Dan Mall, who we saw speak (and thoroughly enjoyed) at Flashpitt last year, makes great websites. And not just great-websites-that-other-designers-like, but sites that make an impact for his clients. He's moved on from Happy Cog to Big Spaceship, and I feel that this positions him quite uniquely to give perspective on the Flash vs. HTML5 debate – which if you didn't know was raging, don't worry, you're in the vast majority. This debate only matters to those who are using the tools, and Dan puts this and more into perspective perfectly in his article, Flash and Standards: The Cold War of the Web.

The point that is lost on a lot of people, who have justifiable and passionate feelings about this, is that it doesn't matter to the end user. The end user wants things that they can use. If you think annoying advertising is going to end because Flash isn't on the iPad, you're sorely mistaken. Sites that need ads to survive will continue to let the ads get in your way, and HTML5 will enable them to do just that.

Without ever stating it so eloquently, we here at Actual Size share a very similar philosophy with Dan. We have Flash people (okay, person) and developers. We all work together. Our work is proof of that concept – technologies are used where appropriate. I think Dan puts it in best when he says:

"Create something excellent where the technology is transparent, and allow only the curious to look under the hood to actually see what’s going on."

So figure out what your goal is, and use that tool. Because that's what these technologies are – tools. As the old saying goes, if your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. That means your mobile news site should not be in Flash, even if you love Flash. That means if HTML and JavaScript are limiting the execution of a concept, use Flash. Use anything. Make it happen. Do something that makes the curious web geeks look under the hood. Do something that the average user wants to tell their friends about it. Do something, but don't just sit around calling other technologies names.