It's 1999. I Just Launched the Flash Intro for the Cadillac Website.
Hired as a freelancer to optimize images for 56K dial-up, I got the chance to flex my Flash skills and bring the Creative Director's vision to life on Cadillac.com. An Art Director offer, a Times Square billboard, and one obvious decision later, I started my own web design business in Connecticut. That was over 25 years ago.
By Michael Baker ·
It's 1999. I just launched the Flash intro for the Cadillac website.
I was originally hired as a freelancer to optimize images and build iframe-based pages for Cadillac. I'm talking 56K modem optimization. Sure, some people had the new cable modems, but 56K dial-up was still the standard. We counted every kilobyte, made transparent GIF buttons with separate on and off states, and tried to make everything load as fast as possible over a dial-up connection.
Then I got the chance to flex my Flash skills. I took the Creative Director's vision and brought it to life. Keyframes on a timeline, optimizing vectors, every pixel accounted for.
I spent days in a room making sure our JavaScript could detect Flash 3, 4, or 5 on every browser imaginable. There were literally about 40 computers lined up with different versions of Netscape, Internet Explorer, Macs, and PCs.
If the intro worked on every one of those machines, it went live.
Around that time I was offered an Art Director position. I quit this job because the commute from downtown Milford, CT was killing me. Getting back from the train was depressing. All that's there are old broken buildings, a nasty Chinese restaurant and a Subway. (My future client will change the entire landscape)
I remember walking back to Grand Central after the launch and looking up at a Cadillac.com billboard in Times Square. I couldn't believe I had worked on that. Me, the former house painter.
I never went to college. I had already worked at ESPN as a Disney employee, and now I was working at a New York City agency creating websites for global brands.
I never really understood why this work came so naturally to me. It just clicked.
Then I made what I thought was the obvious decision. Especially after seeing what the agency billed Cadillac. 🙂
I left the agency, stopped commuting into New York City, and started my own web design business from my home in Connecticut. I figured every small business would want a website and this incredible new Flash technology. 😂
That was over 25 years ago.
Flash is gone.
Dial-up is gone.
Transparent GIF buttons are gone.
Hell, even freelancers are going away because of AI.
The tools have changed from Photoshop slices, obsessing over every kilobyte, single-pixel perfection, and Flash to fully staffed AI agent creative teams and modern web applications, but the mission hasn't changed:
Solve problems, create great experiences, and help businesses grow.
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