And that was it. Creative concepts, visual motifs, and even bandwidth concerns could all be tossed into the back seat. Simply put, the goal was to push every known limit of Web design today: to do nothing less than Shred the Web (U.S).

The first thing the design firm did was to enlist the aid of Craig Drake, aka the "Boba Fett of Flash." It was Drake's task to develop the interface for Shredtheweb.com. "The way that Craig makes pages move is amazing," explains Kelly Goto, the creative director for the project. "He's not just applying the same old video game effects. His approach is very elegant, and I find that really unique."

Members of the team, which soon grew to include enhancement designer Carl Nolting and information designer Alex Yra, began their work by exploring every nook and cranny of LiveMotion, which they would be using for all of the animation on the site. Nolting, who is well-versed in Adobe After Effects®, found LiveMotion's interface especially intuitive.

"What was cool about this project was that there were really no limitations," he continues. "We could come up with ideas that no one had attempted before because they simply didn't have the software to do it. That's what got me excited."

After brainstorming various creative approaches, the Idea team settled on the concept of natural elements — fire, water, air. The team then created playgrounds for each element. "We call them playgrounds because you're supposed to play with them," Goto explains.

Indeed, the site is nothing if not playful — and experimental. "The whole site is riddled with Easter eggs, and sometimes people find the eggs and sometimes they don't," Goto says. "You can't imagine how far we pushed the current technology."

Still, Goto and crew also discovered that there can be a distinct downside to having too much creative freedom. "The site really developed from us taking various concepts and figuring out if we could pull them off," she explains. "We'd push the software as far as it would go, and sometimes we'd have to go back to the table and start over."

Of course, such challenges are a large part of the fun. As Nolting puts it: "I was learning new techniques while I was building the site. For me, it was a cool way to actually experience firsthand how all of Adobe's products integrate together."

Nolting goes on to explain that many of the site assets, especially the video clips, went from Adobe Premiere® to Adobe Photoshop® and ImageReady™ to Adobe Illustrator®. "We even used Adobe Streamline™ a little bit," he adds.

Meanwhile, back at Idea, everyone who worked on the site is quick to credit the contributions of their teammates. Notes Drake, "Since I had started working on the software a few months before, I was half teacher and half designer — which was a bit different for me. But it all came together really well." Goto sums up the feeling of working with such talented people: "I had a dream once that I wasn't working at Idea anymore and I woke up and felt awful," she says. "That's when I realised I had to work here."