Banner Snack Review & Contest

Posted January 13th, 2009 / By AJ Troxell in Contests, News, Tools, Web Apps

Check out the contest details at the bottom of the article and enter to Win!

Are you interested in creating animated flash advertisements for yourself or clients? If so, then this is the web site for you. Without any experience in flash or action script, you can create fully animated advertisements with all the bells and whistles on the cheap.

BannnerSnack.com is a web site that most anyone could have some use for. Continue reading to find out why.

Intro

When you first come to BannnerSnack.com you are welcomed by a very clean web site with all the frills of a “Web 2.0″ site.  You have the option of viewing examples of what you can do with their banner maker, signing up for a free account, or purchasing a premium account.

If you are new to Banner Snack, I would suggest signing up for a free account and trying out their banner maker before you go premium as you can freely create banners of almost any shape and size with tens of effects and transitions. Be aware though, that the free account does place a watermark on all of the banners you create.

Now that you have signed up for the free account, let’s get down to business.

Interface

The interface of Banner Snack closely resembles that of most flash programs, although missing some of the more advanced panels and libraries. When you first come to the interface you have the option of creating a new banner or viewing some of the public banners that have been created by other members. I would advise against viewing the public banners, as most of them are very simple and don’t do justice to what you can really accomplish with the banner maker.

Upon choosing to create a new banner, you are given a plethora of banner sizes to pick from. Or you can create your own custom size, along with customizing your canvas background with an image or color. One thing that did strike me as odd is that when you import an image as a background it is brought in at the proper size. Yet if you bring in an image as an object it is imported at about one quarter of it’s actual size. This is done so that an image fits within the canvas, but can be quite annoying when you are trying to bring in another image that will be a secondary background. The fix is as simple as dragging an anchor point out to your desired size, but you can have problems with your images losing their quality upon doing this.

Pros

• No experience necessary.
• Easy to use interface.
• Tens of effects & transitions.
• Great free membership for non-client advertisement creation.

Cons

• No “back” action. (Be careful of what moves you make.)
• Images come in at one fourth of actual size.
• Lacking precise control for filters. (A drop shadow is a drop shadow, no option for changing distance or opacity.)
• Possibility of being expensive. (If you aren’t going to use it frequently you may find their prices a little steep. It would be nice if they had a single pay-per-use option.)

Summary

Over all Banner Snack is a very useful tool for someone with no experience, or need for flash software. But if you have any professional use for it, a premium membership may come in handy, you just may find it a little pricey if you are only going to use it once in a month, and are paying $9. It would be nice if they gave an option to pay for a single banner creation. It also, would make the interface more complicated to use, but further options for some of the filters would be nice. I would prefer to be able to control how far away from an object my drop shadow is and how intense it is, without having to change the specifics of the parent object. By all means, head over to BannnerSnack.com and give it a try, overall I think it is worth it.

Video Walk Through

Below you can view a quick video walk through of how to use the Banner Maker.

BannerSnack.com Walk Through from AJ Troxell on Vimeo.

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Contest Details

We are giving away (3) licenses for BannerSnack. (2) Will be given away to people who tell us why you’d like to win in the comments below! That’s all you have to do. Contest will close Friday 23rd at 9p EST. Winners will be announced the Monday after. The last (1) license will be given away at our big Creative/Design Essentials Giveaway at the end of January, so stay tuned!