When I first moved to the neighborhood there was a big old Catholic Church near by called Holy Family. The local Archdiocese decided to close the church a couple of years ago and sell off the land. There were rumors that the Church was sold to an advertising firm last year but I never really did find out if they ever moved in–or even if the rumor was true. But lo and behold today I came across an article about the buildings that were left vacant by the big church closing that shuttered the place to begin with and sure enough an ad agency called CFX Advertising has moved in. From the (tiny) photos on their site they seem to have done some interesting things with the place.

Unfortunately, their site suffers from the problems that a lot of smaller design firms suffer from. Namely too much flash and design that seems to be sized for smaller monitors. I think that this has to do with designers coming of age and learning their trade in the late 90’s and never updating their skills. Web design rules are constantly in flux and one really needs to be immersed in them to keep up. In the late 90’s Flash was all the rage. Now most web developers know that CSS is the bomb—not just for fashionable reasons, but also for purely functional reasons too. If you design your entire site in flash, then it’s really hard to be discovered–not to mention the pain it is to redesign or even update. Flash has its place, but seriously it’s best use is not pure web design. Some design firms know this and they have people on staff that are proficient in modern web design techniques but due to lack of time and or budgets or both haven’t kept up with their own sites. Kind of the “Cobblers kids are the last to get shoes” syndrome. I don’t know what the deal is with this place but maybe I’ll take a stroll over and say hi to the new neighbors and maybe I’ll find out.