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Multiple Personalities;
Three Multimedia Pros Underscore Job Opportunities in This Growing Field
by Donna Tapellini, NJ Tech
February 2001
An Excerpt
 Click over to the GráficaInter.active Web site, and you'll quickly be treated to pulsing dance music and some eye-candy graphics with a few very clever twists.
That intro is the work of Jacob Usawicz, manager of creative services for GráficaInter.active, an interactive ad agency based in Chester. Placing at No. 62 on Adweek's IQ Interactive Magazine list of top 100 interactive agencies nationwide, GráficaGroup has created campaigns for the likes of Lucent Technologies, AT&T, and the New Jersey Lottery.
Usawicz puts his multimedia skills to work for these clients and others, with a big emphasis on Web-based multimedia presentations that often consist of catchy Macromedia Flash animations. Look at any of his online work, and it's clear that Usawicz is a big Flash proponent.
"You can hit almost all five senses (with Flash) and express ideas you couldn't with a flat presentation using PowerPoint," he says. One presentation for a dot.com financial services company shows employees how to invest their 401(k) savings. Users can choose either to view the presentation on the Web or download a self-running executable. Usawicz tried to make the images in the presentation as soothing as possible: an acorn falling from the top of the screen, then growing into a tree, much like the users' savings; the sounds of blowing breezes and wind chimes.
Other reasons Usawicz is a big Flash proponent: File sizes in the latest version (Flash 5) are smaller than ever. Flash costs less than other programs. And almost anyone can add Flash capabilities to their browsers — Usawicz believes more users have Flash than DHTML and Java capabilities.
A painting background set the stage for Usawicz's creative career. Later, he taught himself programming, and he's now proficient in Flash, with some Macromedia Director experience and lots of basic programming knowledge.
What's the next step for Usawicz's online presentations? Thanks to MP3 technology, Usawicz can add even more and better sounds to his presentations, even letting users choose the music they listen to as the program runs. That's a big deal, he says, because "it's the sound that sets the feeling." And Usawicz sees even more dynamic functionality in the future. "If the user starts putting variables into a Web site, and you can push that info to the server, the server will generate the presentation for you," based on the user's own input.
But perhaps the best reason for pushing multimedia to its limits, says Usawicz, is keeping up with — and even surpassing — the Joneses. "It lets us compete with the big New York city companies," he says.
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