Many moments of advice, inspiration and charm. I just wish I could have been a reader the whole time, and not a potential client.

I returned a year later and his 40 min talk, which was supposed to be an hour, focused on the video clips he had shot to accompany his upcoming book, MTIV. Too much!

Hilman should talk art, design, and inspiration, not Hillman.

I can see how the book might be interpretated as such, but I personally felt otherwise; I felt that the personal reflections were rooted in more real life situations. I want to know how he felt; what were his motivations? How did he generate ideas and solutions? Often the answers to those questions call for a deeper and more personal look of the person presenting them.

I come from a fine arts background in illustration; I had no formal training in graphic design, but I’ve been working as designer (in New Media and am presently a senior) for about 5 years now. Hillman’s personal accounts and biography appealed to me immediately – for years I’ve known how to design but not entirely why I did things the way I did. Hillman’s book, for me personally, really hit the spot, for it’s been a refreshing and clarifying modicum in a large world of development. I relished his personal experiences, because I could relate to them, but in all fairness not everyone will relate and thus potentially be turned off.

I feel that this book is well worth every penny, and I highly recommend it to the novice and seasoned pro.

His website http://www.hillmancurtis.com says it all: HE USES IMAGES INSTEAD OF TEXT.

I like some of Curtis’ animation, but his first book is self-congratulatory, and “overdesigned” so as to be unreadable.

We should all be over the hype by now, and we should question rather than applaud work by web design “icons” that fails to embrace the nature of the web.

…never, ever sell your design. You should be able to lay out your comps in front of the clients and if you have heard them, stayed true to their desires, and included them in the creative process, the designs should speak for themselves. The client should be able to look at the designs and see a
bit of themselves…
…resist the temptation to sell your designs, because it’s not about educating your client as to how and why design works… they already know!

so, they client should just ‘get it’? this perpetuates the myth of design as something that can’t be discussed or debated, but rather it’s just some bit of ‘magic’ passed from hillman’s soul to the client. and if the client is true and if hillamn is true, than a light will go on, everything will click, profit margins soar and Frodo reaches Mt. Doom safely.

But I am getting tired of “design as magic” as much as “usability as science”

They’ve already seen your sketches, rough drafts, and comps, and they’ve already commented and given their suggestions.

At the point you show them the final design, you shouldn’t *need* to sell your design. It’s merely the last iteration in a long process the client has been involved in.

I’m used to selling my designs, but having recently moved to higher ed, I’m shocked that I don’t need to, and not because I communicate with my “clients”. They just trust me.

Otherwise, I loved the book. It was real stories and why and why not. It was experience. I didn’t think it was self-congratulatory at all. It was story-telling. It was happy hour with Hillman talking about design and how he does it, and I while readong, I found myself responding with my own experiences. I found MTIV to be a conversation I’ve been wanting to have for a long time.