I recently created a series of Flash Banners for an Independent Designer buddy of mine. He’s a print and interactive designer with a lot of talent and skill and he utilizes me for building out the Flash Banners he designs for agencies and clients. His customers have no idea that he is not the one actually building the banners, and for purposes of his brand and identity I remain anonymous and do not come out from behind the curtain. And while ghost work is always welcomed and appreciated, the pity of it is that I do not get to showcase it in the portfolio.

The Flash Banners were three variations of a theme in the standard three Flash Banner sizes: 728×90, 160×600 and 300×250 for a total of 9 banners. He delivered Photoshop files to me on Saturday evening and needed them rushed, hoping for a Tuesday delivery. Being a one-man interactive agency, emergency work and fast turn-around is my specialty, and so I had them all zipped up and delivered to his email box bright and early Tuesday morning.

In creating the banners I of course performed my own production design, creating the needed assets from the Photoshop files he sent over via YouSendIt‘s free file delivery system. I built the Flash Banners to standard industry best practices: with a 1 pixel border, an overlay button with clickTag flash variable, under 15 seconds of animation at 18 frames per second and all wrapped-up in a SWF under 35k in file size.

But with the job over and the SWFs delivered, I once again found myself with the problem of anonymous work — I could not showcase the banners in my portfolio.

Enter Lindsay Lohan. America’s cutest party-chick is refilling her coffers by doing what comes easiest, taking pictures of herself with no clothes on for all the world to see.
And between the Playboy photo shoot being hacked and released early on the web, and LiLo losing ten-thousand dollars of her new-found party cash while partying in Hawaii, it seemed like the natural thing to do to retro-fit my cute little flash banners into these party-girl tribute banners.

These demo banners click through to the official LindsayLohan.com website, a Flash website with an extremely long preloader that results in a Flash landing page with some high-end animations, glossy photography and a “coming soon” message. All style and no substance — It’s so LiLo.