New way to Work - Flow
You may have noticed that as a designer - you’re constantly fighting file management. Fonts are missing. Images changed but not updated - “Why are the links to media broken again? Oh yeah - that .aep needed THAT missing plug-in!”
It’s kind of archaic isn’t it?
Well get ready for something entirely new. The good folks at Grid Iron have been feeding me enticing hints at this revolution for over a year now - and now ‘Flow‘ is finally unveiled.
Flow keeps a visual record of your projects. Their assets, the timeline and revision history, and the relationship between all related files.As you build up your project, Flow’s Real-Time Asset Tracking System automatically tracks your workflow and maintains the relationships between your pictures, movies, sound-clips, fonts, plug-ins, and color swatches on all your local, network and removable storage devices. By understanding the file formats for all popular creative professional applications and tracking all Import/Export, Save/Save As and Copy/Paste actions on both Mac OS X and Windows, Flow can show you how your files are related regardless of where they are stored.
The best thing is that it does this all behind the scenes - you don’t have to tell it to do anything.
Here’s some full screenshots
PS: if, like many others, you think that Flow’s interface kicks major ass… it’s because my good friend Mark Coleran designed it. You’ve already seen his interface work in films like ‘The Island’, ‘Tomb Raider’, ‘Blade 2′ and ‘Mission Impossible’. Now his work finally comes to us on the desktop.
Depending on my schedule, there’s a possibility that if you’re at NAB in April, you’ll find me showing a few things at the Grid Iron booth (SL6220) - so be sure to come by and say hi.
// jayse
Filed under: Announcements, Design Technique on January 23rd, 2008
That looks fantastic. Does it work with multiple machines across a network? I’m assuming it does.
And any word on price or time of availability?
looks complicated… but neat, nonetheless. i’d be afraid that it would be harder to learn than photoshop!
Mick…
The initial version will be a desktop version, but there will be a network version coming later.
There will be a public beta in the spring and release in summer.
j4n
I can assure you, it is not complicated. In fact, one of the primary goals with this, is to make it so that it is usable without really having to learn anything at all. The whole point is that you don’t have to do anything new or different to get a benefit from it. What might look complicated is the map you see in the centre. This is a representation of your work and will be only as simple or as complex as the jobs you do. If anything, they will show a complex job in a much more visual and coherant way.
wow Mark Coleran himself answering! Thanks so much!
Okay so the goal is to make complicated projects more simple… THAT I would LOVE!
Thanks again!
I saw flow at NAB - that is going to change everything. Very cool.