The web doesn’t feel magic anymore. Here’s why
Ask anyone who was online in the early 2000s and they’ll tell you the same thing: the internet used to feel different. Sites had soundtracks. They opened like film intros. You clicked around just to see what would happen next.
Eric Jordan was one of the people building that feeling. He co-founded 2Advanced Studios, one of the best-known studios of the Flash era web design scene, and has spent about 27 years as a designer and motion graphics artist. He ran the studio out of Southern California for roughly a decade, moved into motion design and freelance creative consulting, and today is back as Chief Creative Officer of a revived 2Advanced.
We sat down with Eric on the NoRobots podcast to talk about what that magic actually was, where it went, and whether AI is finishing it off or could help bring it back. His short answer, which he’d hinted at before we hit record: the magic was never the technology.
Watch the full conversation on YouTube.
Flash era web design: what made it magic and why it faded
Eric spent the early 2000s building some of the most talked-about sites of the Flash years. Here’s how he explains what made that work special, and what happened when the industry moved on.
What made it feel like magic
For Eric, the Flash years were the moment the web jumped from mostly text to something closer to cinema. Sites became fully interactive and movie-like, and studios used that freedom to experiment, take risks and find their own voice.
The goal at 2Advanced was simple to say and hard to do. “We were very focused on building websites that would make you feel something,” he told us. A visitor should have a gut reaction to what they’re seeing.
That came from Eric’s background. Before web design, he wanted to work in film, in special effects and animation. So he treated every site as a story. A huge amount of time and detail went into each one, and the people making them were genuinely excited about the work.
He also points to the community around it. Studios and artists fed off each other’s energy, and that shared excitement was part of what users picked up on. In his view, the magic was a mix of three things:
- Storytelling and deep immersion, not just pages of content
- Risk-taking and personal expression in every project
- A passionate community of studios pushing each other forward
When the magic started to fade
Eric doesn’t think there’s one exact date, but he points to a clear turning point: Apple’s decision not to support Flash on its devices. Losing the main tool for rich interactive work started a slow decline of immersive sites.
After that, a few forces pulled in the same direction:
- Mobile first. Content had to work on phones before anything else.
- Accessibility as the benchmark. It became the main standard teams checked their work against.
- Templates and CMS platforms. Dropping content into a ready-made system simply made economic sense.
The result, as Eric puts it, was a shift from intentional creative work to efficiency and the economics of web design. Passion slowly became less important.
Our host Vlad remembered the same thing from the client side. Around 2016, clients kept asking for “a website like Apple’s,” even when their brand had nothing in common with Apple. Eric agreed that the clean, minimal, long-scroll funnel became the standard everyone chased.
One loss he mentioned surprised us: sound. Old Flash sites often had a soundtrack, and when audio disappeared, a big part of the immersion went with it. Today’s sites can have clever interactive bits, he says, but the feeling of being pulled into a storyline is mostly gone.
AI slop and the missing human decision
If templates flattened the web, AI made it easy to flood it. We asked Eric what’s actually behind “AI slop”: laziness, lack of skill, or something else.
His answer is that people focus on the technology instead of the craft. A lot of AI-made work feels light and short-lived. It can be technically impressive, but it feels disposable, and sometimes soulless. “You can tell that maybe there’s not a human behind these decisions,” he said. That gap is what users notice, even if they can’t name it.
He was honest about how strange this feels after a long career. Eric has spent 27 years building his skills. Now, he said, a nine-year-old can type a prompt in a living room and get something comparably complex in five minutes.
The problem isn’t only that it’s fast. Eric sees creativity as an exchange: you put real energy in, you get something back, and you learn along the way. When a prompt skips that process, the personal growth that comes with making things disappears too.
Vlad compared it to music production. Anyone can open a synth, scroll through preset sounds and samples, and build a track without knowing much about music. But if you can’t shape the sound yourself, everything ends up sounding the same.
Eric took it further. Real creativity comes from personal experience: what’s happened to you, what you believe, what you’ve read and watched. A lot of his early 2Advanced work drew on William Gibson’s Neuromancer, on books in general, and on music festivals and rave culture. He approached web design like film, building one continuing saga across the studio’s sites. That’s why, he says, people still go back to sites from around 2004 and enjoy them today.
AI in web design: tool or decision-maker?
Eric isn’t against AI. He uses it, but on his own terms. The line he draws is about who makes the creative decisions.
Early in his career he had to defend digital art by explaining that the computer wasn’t doing much: he still placed every pixel himself. With one-click generation, he admits that argument is harder to make now. So he’s careful about where AI enters his process.
His example: he has built his own camera systems for Cinema 4D that work with After Effects the way he likes. That’s AI helping with a technical problem so he can focus on the creative one. Letting the machine pick the look, the story or the mood is a different thing entirely. If you hand that over, he warns, you’ll end up unfulfilled.
How clients use AI before they hire a studio
Both Eric and Vlad see one clear upside. Clients now use AI to show what they want.
Vlad’s team gets clients who build a rough MVP with AI, then hand it over when they need security, infrastructure and real architecture. That prototype explains their goals better than any brief.
Eric had a similar motion graphics project. The client arrived with AI-generated assets that were interesting, but they didn’t know how to build them or whether the look was even right. Eric could see the business goals behind the request and all the small touch points the AI had missed. “Humans are very good at those nuanced things,” he said, while AI tends to stay logical and literal.
Doing it properly still takes real work
Vlad pointed out that good AI-assisted work is not one prompt. You set up projects, APIs and connectors, and have a second model check the first one’s output. Eric agreed: you need someone who understands the tools, handles security, and gives the model the right context. In his words, AI is “an arrow in your quiver,” not the thing driving the whole process.
Leaving 2Advanced, and coming back to restore the web
At its peak, 2Advanced was producing a lot of work for some of the biggest clients in the world. Eric could still feel the ground moving. Flash was losing its place, and clients cared less about story and more about getting content out quickly and cheaply.
“I’m an artist and I very much love to tell stories,” he said. “That’s how I connect with people.” Interactive projects were getting boxed in by rules, and the work felt rigid. Around the same time his son was born, and it felt like the right moment for a change. He left the studio, moved to New Zealand and went back to his first love: pure animation and motion graphics.
The 2024 restart
In 2024, co-founder Tony reached out. People were tired of the templated web, he said, new technology was arriving, and it felt like a turning point. They decided to restart 2Advanced Studios.
That same year they were invited to Digital Design Days in Milan and gave a main-stage talk about restoring the web: finding the magic lost in the move away from Flash. The timing lined up with the rise of Rive. The Rive team turned out to be longtime 2Advanced fans and offered to collaborate. Together they rebuilt the studio’s classic V3 site in Rive, and watching people interact with it again gave Eric real hope.
Prophecy, Ruffle and an FWA Site of the Day
The studio also brought back its Prophecy site as an archive, running on Ruffle, a Flash emulator. The project earned an FWA Site of the Day.
It wasn’t easy. Tony passed away recently, and Eric was left handling development parts outside his main skill set. This is where AI genuinely helped. He used it to work through the technical pieces so people could experience those sites again. For him, that’s the right way to use it: covering areas where you’re weaker, while the creative vision stays yours.
Do agencies still need a team in the age of AI?
Eric misses the studio. At its height 2Advanced had around 35 people, and it was a close-knit family where everyone knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Ideas bounced around the room until someone figured out how to build them.
He estimates that half of what made 2Advanced work was simply the people: the jokes, the jabs, the cruises and ski trips together. That bond is what let the team bring its A game to client work.
Vlad shared the same feeling. His company is now fully remote, and calls are only about work. Back when they shared a small office, the best ideas came during coffee runs and lunches, not in meetings.
AI is making teams smaller, Eric says, because a few people can now do the technical work of many. That makes it more important to reach out on purpose. He’s already talking with Shane Mielke, a creative director from the original 2Advanced, about doing something together.
Advice for agency owners thinking about cutting staff
Eric’s advice is to look at your own numbers and overhead, but not to make an impulse call. Replacing people because AI can cover one task might look smart now, but you lose the team dynamic that shapes your studio’s creative voice. “These are just tools. They’re not replacements for people,” he said.
He shared one lesson from 2Advanced’s own history. The studio moved from a small, affordable space into a much larger, impressive one with great lighting. But the team ended up spread out, and some of that close energy was lost.
Make yourself more useful
Vlad argued that roles are merging: being only a front-end developer is getting harder, and full-stack is becoming the norm. Eric agreed and put it simply: make yourself as useful as possible.
On one recent project the sound mix had problems. Eric, hired as the motion designer, used custom analysis tools he had built to help fix it. Stepping outside his role made the project better, and that’s the kind of range today’s tools make possible.
How to bring the magic back into your work
Our last question was the practical one: if you want your website, product or video to feel like those old sites did, what should you change first?
Eric’s answer: stop obsessing over the tool and refill your creative reservoir. Read. Go back to older forms of expression. He’s returning to print design himself, building physical things, shooting real video and experimenting with different lights. The point isn’t nostalgia. It’s bringing old methods into a new process, especially media that AI can’t easily copy.
Vlad added a habit from development work. Before opening Claude Code, he often maps the project structure on paper first. Once the basics are clear, he automates parts of it.
Eric liked that a lot. Reaching for the machine by reflex, he warned, will make our skills weaken and our ideas go stale over time. Instead:
1. Set your intention by hand first, even in a physical notebook.
2. Decide the story, the structure and the feeling yourself.
3. Then bring in AI to help with the parts it’s good at.
4. Keep the final creative calls human.
That’s the thread running through the whole conversation. The Flash era wasn’t magic because of Flash. It was magic because people cared, made deliberate choices and told stories. Any tool, AI included, can carry that, as long as someone is actually behind the decisions.
FAQ
Who is Eric Jordan?
Eric Jordan is the co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of 2Advanced Studios. He has worked as a designer and motion graphics artist for about 27 years and is known for the studio’s Flash era sites.
Why did Flash era websites feel so different?
According to Eric, they were built as stories. Studios took creative risks, used sound and cinematic motion, and aimed for an emotional reaction rather than just delivering content.
What killed the immersive web?
Eric points to Apple dropping Flash support, followed by mobile-first design, accessibility standards and the economics of templates and CMS platforms.
What causes AI slop?
In his view, a focus on the technology over the craft. When no human makes the key creative decisions, the result feels disposable.
How does Eric use AI himself?
For technical support: custom tools, development work on archive projects like Prophecy, and sound analysis. The creative decisions stay with him.
What did 2Advanced rebuild recently?
The classic V3 site, rebuilt in Rive with the Rive team, and the Prophecy site, restored with the Ruffle Flash emulator and awarded FWA Site of the Day.
Where to find Eric Jordan
Visit ericjordan.com to see his work or get in touch by email. On Instagram, he’s @ericleejordan. He’s happy to answer questions or just say hello.
Watch the full interview: Eric Jordan on the lost magic of the web
