Assembly Line 1.0
Company: BizDesign
Estimated Price: $99.95
http://www.bizdesign.com

In its advertisements, BizDesign touts "Assembly Line is a fully customizable collection of artwork and HTML templates designed to be used with HTML editors and multimedia authoring tools." Which is a fair description of what this CD-ROM is. There is not much more than that on the CD-ROM, as it should be. One of the things I hate is when I order something, and I don't get anything close to what I thought I was getting. That isn't true with Assembly Line.

BizDesign is a small start up company, less than five people when they first contacted me about a review of Assembly Line 1.0. There is something I really like about buying a product from a small vendor, like my money is better spent there than with a multi-billion dollar company. Economics of course suggest otherwise, as the large company employs more workers, pays more taxes, etc. Still, when you buy from a small company, you can be pretty assured that when it comes to customer support, they will be much more receptive than an Apple or a Microsoft (both of which in the past I've had nothing but problems when contacting their phone support).

So, what do you get when you order Assembly Line? You get a CD-ROM filled with clip art, web page templates, multi-media graphics, and the like. You name it, it's pretty much all there.

I really enjoyed looking at all the 3D graphic work on the CD-ROM. Assembly Line is action-packed with the stuff, though there are some designs I can't help but wonder how anyone would ever use it. Look below for an example:

What the heck would you use that for? I guess if you were creating a video game or multi-media project, it may be perfect. (It's reduced above to 25% of normal size) That is a great feature of Assembly Line: you get pretty much everything you could ever want, without even knowing you wanted/needed it until you see it.

When I am not working on My Mac Magazine, I do create web sites for businesses, and I have already found some artwork on Assembly Line that fits my needs to a "T". Great stuff!

One of the really useful thing on the CD is "Metamotifs" Here you will find all the graphics to create web pages using all the same color motifs. For instance, you will find buttons, dividers, backgrounds, and more, all matching to create a uniform website. This is a great idea, one I am sure not a few other competitors will try and mimic in the future.

Examples from the "Alien Metamotif #015"

The only problem I can see with any of the artwork is that many of the backgrounds in the graphics are white, rather than transparent. Below is a graphic that would work great on a white background website, but is virtually useless in a colored background without some Adobe Photoshop work.

Same graphics, but one is on a white background, the other is used on a black background. Yes, I can open the graphic in Adobe Photoshop and make the white around the graphic transparent, but when you spend $99.95 for a product, you shouldn't have to.

I really think Assembly Line is a well put together CD-ROM, but I would be remiss in my duties as a reviewer if I didn't point out some of the things I don't like about Assembly Line. (I hope the folks at Bizdesign take this as constructive criticism, so that Assembly Line 2.0 will be better yet!)

1. The photo section.
To break it down even more than that, let me go into a bit more detail.

Some of the Animal pictures are good. Some of the pictures are virtually useless. The Arts section is nice, though I wish some more modern artwork were present. (Not that I don't like the "Wrigley's Double Mint Gum" promotion picture from the 1930's...) Gizmo's is neat, showing a wide range of technical machines I cannot even guess the use of. But one section I saw that very much interested me was "Computers." I am always looking for good computer pictures, but unfortunately all the computer pictures here are woefully out of date. Not a one would ever be useful to me.

If you are going to include computer pictures, aircraft pictures, automotive, and the like, can you try and give me some current pictures? Also, I don't want the picture to contain some guy blocking half of the computer. What good is that? And try some white or black background, with just the computer. That would be useful.

2. Browser Interface.
To view the contents of Assembly Line, you view the artwork via your Web browser. Not that I think this is a really bad idea, but I was expecting perhaps a custom interface to view the artwork. What if I am working on a project not for web publishing, but rather multimedia. What if I don't have a web browser on my computer?

Even though I was viewing local files rather than on the web, both Navigator/Communicator and Internet Explorer are slow loading these pages. With Navigator 4.0.5 and 75Mb given to the program and running the Assembly Line off a 24 speed CD-ROM, loading the complex HTML pages off the CD was still slow. Much too slow, in fact, to rapidly view pages. When I'm looking through a collection like Assembly Line, I want to move fast. I'll know what I want to use when I see it.

My own work-around was simple. I used GraphicConverter (Shareware: http://www.lemkesoft.com) to view the folders on Assembly Line as a slide show. In this way, I was able to view all the graphics in any given category at least fifty times faster than I could in a Web browser. This is something I hope Bizdesign takes into account in future releases. Sure, keep a Web browser interface for those who like that, but provide faster and better ways to view your graphics.

Getting to know BizDesign
I decided to call BizDesign and get some more information on the company and future products. I left a message on their answering machine, and received a call back within five minutes. I spoke with Roksana Amiri-Bigvand, the Chief Technical Officer, for a good fifteen minutes. It will be Roksana whom you speak to if you order Assembly Line over the phone. She is a very nice person, and I learned quite a lot about the company and how they got started. Let me simply say that I feel even better about recommending Assembly Line to My Mac's readers after talking to her. Trust me, if you have a problem, they will go above and beyond the call of duty to help you out.

I also talked with Greg, whom did most of the artwork on the CD-ROM. I did tell him there were some designs I could not ever seeing myself using, such as the one I showed above, and he laughed, replying "I love making weird stuff like that, getting creative." Creative he got, and the beautiful artwork is a testament to his talent. How many companies can you call and talk to the person who actually created that program/artwork you just bought? Not very many, I can assure you.

And lastly, the folks at BizDesign are very much pro-Mac. I was a little surprised by the depth of knowledge they had on the Mac platform; not just from a technical standpoint but of the Mac market in general. They purchased their Macs when the huge "Apple is going under" rumors were everywhere, yet they stuck with Apple (Power Mac 9500). They are very dedicated to Macs and Mac users.

The Summary
Looking for good artwork for a multi-media project or a web page design? You really can't go wrong with Assembly Line 1.0. I highly recommend this product.

MacMice Rating: 5

Tim Robertson
publisher@mymac.com