1. SLOW AND STEADY: THE HI-RES! WAY
What’s interesting about Hi-ReS!, however (and it’s certainly not the infuriatingly awkward spelling of their company name), is how they were resolutely not dazzled or awestruck by all the new technology they found at their fingertips. So while many other companies were seemingly using Flash to create wildly elaborate but essentially unsatisfying user experiences and employing hundreds of staffonly to lay them off a few months or so later, Hi-ReS! kept their eyes on the long term and focused instead on producing work that was useful and appropriate, as well as radical and innovative.

“When we first started working in interactive, the tools were extremely important for us, but in the end, that’s what they are— tools,” says Schmitt. “There is also a part of us that is actually interested in remaining a bit dumb when it comes to technology. We recently talked to someone who said that many of her pieces are the result of not knowing how to program correctly. And that she now finds it increasingly difficult to get the same results, because she knows what will cause what to occur. It’s something we can definitely empathize with and we constantly try to find new ways of looking at things. Learning new tools is a great way to recapture the naivete you have when you first start something.”

While the eventual dotcom bust led many to sneer at Flash and its animation capabilities, Hi-ReS! managed not only to maintain its client base but also to flourish. Slowly. Even now, the company numbers only eight full-time employees, many of whom have been a part of the team for over three years. The result seems (from the outside at least) to be an admirably tight-knit group that can nonetheless genuinely take on large, corporate projects.

“When we did start to employ people, we made sure they were not only people we would get along with, but also people who have the same kind of curiosity we have,” says Jugovic. “Almost none of the people at Hi-ReS! have a background in interactive, but that helps us to tackle projects from many different angles, while having enough knowledge about the medium to know how to execute them correctly.”