Visible"Hillman Curtis
"Making the
Visible"
Seven Steps of Design
For Hillman Curtis, design is a process comprised of seven steps: listen, unite, theme, concept, eat the audience, filter and justify. If done successfully, the end result will be a design that combines color, type, layout and motion to tell a story that supports the theme as identified in the process above.
Design does not begin when a designer sits down at a computer but rather when he sits down with the person commissioning the work. Curtis believes you must first listen and understand the company and/or product that they are trying to sell.
After uniting the ideas and developing a theme, you must get to know your audience or “eat the audience” and incorporate them into the concepting phase prior to designing the piece. Filters, or the limitations of the medium you are designing, must be considered for a site to load correctly. Curtis says, “The way a site loads is just as important as what it loads.”1 (p. 20)
Each element of a good design must have a reason for existing in that design and relate back to the theme. Curtis notes, “If you can’t justify a move, or a font, or a color choice to yourself, the work won’t ring try to you." 1 (p. 93)
Curtis’ philosophy of using the above seven elements to attack a design result in a site that tells a story that has a strong central theme. “It’s saying something with color, layout, motion, rhythm, images and sequence in a way that speaks louder than text based messaging,”2 he says.
Viral Marketing Influences
Curtis is a pioneer in digital design as he developed and incorporated Flash modules into web design. When most web sites were relying on text and pictures to convey a message, Curtis developed animation and a way make the flat screen of a computer come to life with movement. “You can’t rely on text to get your message across in different countries and motion is just one more tool that can help you,”3 he explains.
These animated movies have infiltrated numerous major corporations include Intel, Adobe, AOL, Yahoo among others. It has also created a movement of viral marketing, emails that often contain links to short films that seek to entertain or sell their product or candidate often in a manner that is appealing to Generation Y (example: JibJab).
Elements of Design: Design Techniques
Visual Hierarchy
In many of Curtis’ designs he uses a central image to convey an immediate message on first glance and then leads you through the page with clean navigation. When looking at the bridge in In America, Curtis uses it to convey the central theme of the movie of escape and starting over.
A second example would be that of the Salary Calculator site that begins uses a Flash module to “draw” the main image thus capturing your attention as the remainder of the page loads. Again, Curtis uses lines to outline his subject before coloring them in, similar to the design in In America.
For the real estate development site, Greenwich Street Project, the building photos illustrating the works of the real estate company are the focus of the site and immediately capture the viewer's attention and then lead the viewer to the navigation. Curtis maintains this visual hierarchy throughout the site, substituting various building images on the different pages.
Lines
Curtis uses a variety of implied, actual psychic lines throughout his designs and as different elements to the design to show height as in the explicit lines used in the building designs for the Greenwich Street Project, to show motion as the actual and implied lines do in the SideShow Creative (our company section - see image to the right), and to outline as in In America.
It’s also interesting to note that he uses non-traditional navigation that incorporates lines in many of his sites, including the site for Sideshow Creative.
Motion
Curtis not only uses the inherent animated nature of Flash to convey motion but also uses color, lines and text to convey motion as well.
In the movie site for In America, the graduated use of the color on the underside of the bridge shows the movement from one place to another. He also uses the graduated color of the underside of the bridge to show movement of the crossing. Bend it Like Beckham is perhaps one of his best examples of motion (see more below).
Bend it Like Beckham - An Analysis
“Bend the Rules and See What Happens”
To effectively analyze one of Curtis’ web sites, you must first consider its theme and intended audience. For the movie Bend it Like Beckham, the theme is “Bend the Rules and See What Happens” and the audience is teens. Therefore, Curtis has used color, motion, lines and interactivity to create a site that stands out and captures the attention of the teen viewer who expects excitement and to be entertained.
The visual hierarchy of the page with the central placement
of the large Flash module immediately captures the teen’s attention and conti
nues
as you click through the site. By cropping the images of the two characters in
the central image and placing them on a diagonal off center, Curtis creates
motion. He continues this theme of motion across the bottom navigation bar by
grouping the outlined images across a grid. Movement continues with the
placement of the title’s text conforming to the shape of the soccer ball and the
trailing text delivered via airplane placed on a diagonal that crescendo’s from
small to large.
He retains the image of the soccer ball throughout creating an element of unity throughout the site.
A detail as small as the quotes that appear between pages keep in line with his philosophy of justification. These reviews are not from traditional media outlets such as the New York Times, Vanity Fair etc. but rather they are from People, Entertainment Weekly and other teen focused and respected magazines.
But it’s with his choice of color, bright orange, blue and red that Curtis himself bends the rules but manages to add interest and excitement through the discordant colors. While the orange and blue are complementary to each other on the color wheel, their value and intensity are distinctly different. Add to that the introduction of the red/burgundy color, and Curtis is bending the color rules. However, as those are the three primary colors used, the design doesn’t become too complicated or bright.
It’s interesting to note that in many of Curtis’ designs he uses contrasting colors but only uses a small palate. In the Manifestival site the bright green that appears as you mouse over contrasts in intensity with the cool teal blue that is the focus of the primary image.
However, the downside to a site designed with the primary emphasis being on the Flash module is there is no way to navigate within the module. You cannot bookmark a specific section or email the link to someone – the web site stays constant throughout the site. It is interesting that in an effort to still provide the viewer, a teen who is more likely to send items to a friend, he has incorporated a send to a friend function in the gallery section.
Everyone and everything, it seems, has a web site these days. Therefore, for a web site to be successful, it has to grab the surfer’s attention and hold onto it for as long as possible. It must be relevant to the viewer and precisely targeted to their interests and “eat the audience” as Curtis describes. If not, there will be no stop and stay power – the ultimate goal of any site.
Bibliography and Footnotes
1) Curtis, Hillman. MTIV: Process, Inspiration and Practice for the New Media Designer. N.p.: New Riders, 2002. 1-93.
2) http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/interviews/hillman.html
3) http://www.glidemagazine.com/articles7.html
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/curtis-hillmancurtis-com
http://www.designinteract.com/insights/091201/
http://www.movieeye.com/reviews/get_movie_review/1711.html
http://www.filmview.org/reviews/soundtrack/inamerica.htm
Last Updated October 9, 2004