When A Pointless Flash Animation Is Just Right

We're all familiar with pointless Flash animations that serve only as barriers to getting to useful web content. But I recently stumbled across an instructive exampe of a "pointless" Flash animation that works:

It's on the web site of the musician Adem:

http://www.adem.tv/site/

Why does it work? I see a few reasons, none of them mysterious and yet all of them frequently ignored:

• The animation is not an obstacle - it's on the same page as the main content.
• But it's designed to support, not compete with, that content.
• It's light weight - Firefox's Web Developer extension tells me the whole page is just 107 KB.
• It's relevant to the site, expressing a sense of the artist's identity.
• It's delightful in its own right. I just like watching it go.

Achieving this kind of deceptively simple design balance makes all the difference - the same difference that distinguishes an iPod from an iPlod.

The Adem site is designed by worklesshard.