For as long as any one even cares to remember, print, that is words on
the page, and the mastery of it, have been the aim of every
composition instructor we have ever met. Knowing the correct word to
put after the last word. Knowing structure. Knowing grammar. Knowing
your point, geting to it and getting it over with.

Print media has given way in many ways to the visual medium, where the
color, shape, and layout of the means as much (if not more) than the
word on the page. If there are words at all.

What does that mean for the teachers of composition? Are we obsolete?
No. Will we have to rethink everything we know about we know about
literacy? Not quite yet. Do we abandon the knowledge, theories and
applications that we have come to know to meet this challendge? No.

In the book, "Writing New Media: Theory and Application for Expanding
the Teaching of Composition", the authors do not proclaim from atop
the ivory tower of theory that all we know is of little value, rather
they each draw from the literacies currently in use as a set point to
complete the activities and exercises given after the respective
article.

Even though there are slight variations, the main thread of the book
would be that the definition of compostion is changing. And while the
print or alphabet-based literacy is still very relevant, it isn't the
only standard used to measure literacy. And as instructors of
compostion, we can takes cues from such varied areas as poetry,
geometry and music (Geoffrey Sire's "box-logic"); visual & graphic
design (Anne Frances Wysocki's "The Sticky Embrace of Beauty") or the
story of one person that was lost in one literacy, but found in
another (Cynthia L. Selfe's "Students that Teach Us") to expand what we
know and how we teach literacy.

If there was a key word to note here, it would be "expanding". The
lagacy literacies are remembered and honored in this series of
articles and exercises. And even if you have never used a computer
past Word or your email, activities such as Selfe's "A Visual Essay"
makes you a co learner with your students into the this very new area
of learning.

If there was one drawback, it would be that these concepts and activities
are very new and so far from the norm that reactions may swing from the
intimidated to the credulous. Be that as it may, this book is a very good
first step to the future of what we call compostition.

So Writing New Media wants to be a wake up call. It wants to instill shock and awe into teachers of writing and shake up the system. Only, as an instructor of college writing who has grown up with teachers who already brought "new media" into the classroom I as more annoyed than satisfied by the tone of the book.

The tone made me extremely angry. I felt like I was being attacked as I read the first 60 pages of the book. It wasn't until it was discussed in my graduate course that I realized I was angry because this tirade wasn't directed at me but at the "old school" teachers. I already bring in new media and mixed media into the classroom because I am of the generation that thinks NOT bringing it in is friggin boring.

There are some good notions at the end of the book, and the end of each essay ends in "in classroom exercises and activities" which are probably more helpful than the essays and tirades.

.
Hillam Curtis, veritable Flash mavens as they are, show less interest in spewing out a snazzy graphic-design treatise or a 'Web Graphics for The Rest of Us' series of tips stash on how to make your designs ooze sex appeal.

They offer instead a rather refreshing and long overdue thoughtpiece on 'New Media' design that is not confined to the web. Our world has obviously chugged along since the days of whimsical DHTML and the other Nielsenesque extreme of prosaic "usability for everything", and we now have truly new mediums, modern technologies that need increasingly intelligent designing for.

This book presents some of the most practical, common-sensical ideologies to deal with such new-fangled challenges. Several philosophical elements of creative design are discussed, and while such rhetoric may not be everyone's bag, the writing is real-worldly and intuitive enough to be engrossing.

What makes it an outstanding book though is the smart undercurrent of design as an art of 'problem solving', with its primary agenda of identifying and meeting goals that target users expect from the medium they interact with.

You won't find tips, techniques and code snippets here except when inevitable to illustrate an idea. When we discuss color for instance, we talk about the affective influences of colour on people, not Pantene decimals or the spokes of a colour wheel. Discussing typography is not about quaint typefaces or font sizes but about leading the reader into the information, aiding and facilitating communication. The illustrations are fresh, exciting and for anyone related to design, veritably inspiring.

Is this required reading in graphic design courses yet? It should be. It certainly could be. A highly recommended reading for anyone in the business of design.

In the dim dark early days of the Web a then unknown author combined personal anecdote, design insights, HTML code, layout tips and website samples into a unique book that became a bestseller over the course of two printings.

That book was David Siegel's Creating Killer Web Sites, and Hillman Curtis' MTIV is an admirable successor to the first Web bestseller. MTIV does not contain quite the same mix of stuff as its predecessor, and that's a good thing, as the Web and our understanding of it has changed since Siegel's time. Foremost is the fact that Flash has now assumed an importance that plain vanilla HTML once held.

Curtis the Flasher of Renown.
Hillman Curtis is one of the best and most famous Flashers on the planet. He is the Flash designer who first started using the term motion graphics for what he was doing in the early days of Flash, and he is the first Flash author I've read who emphasizes story, story, story as the motivation and prime mover of what he does. In fact he is possibly the first well-known and well-respected designer who has had the guts to come out and say such a thing.

In a rerun of the legend of the blind men and the elephant, people have perceived the Web as they want to, based on personal interests. Hence technologists seeing it as a technology problem, IT (IS, for North American readers) specialists see it as an IT solution, programmers assuming it is a programming exercise, traditional graphic designers seeing websites as a collection of pages like those in a book, and corporate marketing communications types treating websites as online brochures.

They are all partially right. Websites can be some or all of these things, but the Web itself is about communication and storytelling. In its short history few people have perceived this fact, and even fewer have pointed it out in public. Bravo Hillman.

Putting It Into Perspective.
Put it all into perspective, place the web and the Internet up there alongside all the other new communications technologies that came before them, consider what they're all there for and it becomes dead obvious - storytelling. Myths, legends, cave paintings, the written word, telegraph, telephone, radio and TV, and the digital media - they exist for the transmission of tales.

MTIV reminds us of that fact and more. Its subtitle is Process, Inspiration and Practice. In the Inspiration section Curtis shares some of the works by artists works in non-digital media that inspire him, and in Process he explains the practices that have made his firm such a success - Listen, Unite, Theme, Concept, Eat The Audience (you have to read to understand it), Filter and Justify. What he shares in Process is enough to justify the cost of the book.

In Practice Curtis hands the story over to some guest experts for the telling, and they include Steve Krug on usability, Jeff Southard on XML, The Rooster Design Group (the book's designers) on print, Leatrice Eiseman on color, and Ellen Shapiro on grids. All good stuff and worthy, but I have more of the same in many other books.

Let's Improve The Naming Of The Parts.
I like that Curtis calls himself a New Media Designer and to what he does as New Media Design. Paradoxically, although New Media Designer is as ambiguous as competing terms like Multimedia Designer, Interactive Designer, or plain old Digital Designer, the former is more open and allows for endless possibilities.

The Web itself keeps changing. Digital technology continues to evolve. The roles that New Media Designers take on will continue to mutate. Hillman Curtis himself has designed for other media including print, directed and designed video projects, and created all kinds of marketing and advertising products, as well as the things you'd expect an innovative Flash expert to have done, all under the name New Media Designer.

I think we should all follow Curtis' lead, and be done with inventing new titles for what we do. New Media Designer is good enough for me. So are Hillman Curtis' processes as a designer, and I will be adding his personal inspirations to my own...

if you find yourself in a design rut lately, pick up this book! not only did this book inspire me, it reminded me of why i chose to be an interactive designer in the first place. i always love reading how other designers get their doses of inspiration, and this book not only helps you go "behind the scenes" of a talented designer, but it also focuses in on key design principles from different design mediums such as print, motion graphics and video. it's definitely motivated me to start working on motion graphics projects again!

This book is a revelation! If you are all serious about making movies (or getting the most out of watching them) you must have this book. Bruce Block's theories will open your eyes to a hidden world of communication encoded into film. You will learn how visuals and their structure are just as effective and important as story and dialogue. You will see all films in a completely new and exciting way. You will gain the insight and tools to make your own movies visually compelling and powerful. I've also attended Bruce's visual expression classes in Los Angeles and can honestly say they were the most formative and enlightening of any film theory class I've ever had. Read this book and you'll never see movies the same way.

"The Visual Story" really is unlike anything out there for its emphasis on the ways in which the structure of an image or of images in sequence -- its shape, its apparent spatial dimensions, its movement, its complexity, its rhythm and texture, its color dimensions -- can all work together to support the emotional and thematic dimensions of the story it aims to tell. His explanations are simultaneously simple and insightful, and spending time with this book can really open your eyes to the wide range of ways in which moving images can be meaningful at a level that can be independent of the actual content of the image (who is in it, what is being shown). Essential reading for filmmakers who aspire to take advantage of the potentials of the medium, this book would also be enormously revealing and useful for students of film, for film lovers, and even for those who have a broad interest in the visual arts. His chapters on space and on color, and his discussions of their emotional as well as their formal content, are especially valuable and full of insight. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

Eye-opening is an understatement, Bruce Block turned film editing for me from a mystery into a language. I was fortunate enough to attend his seminar once, the single most useful lecture on anything I've ever been to. My notes are falling apart from constant use, finally he has a book out!

Going beyond the usual editing basics of clarity and information delivery, this book explains with how to use shapes, colour, and motion on screen to control pacing and feeling. No film student should be without it; also screenwriters, comic artists, web designers, anyone who deals with visual storytelling. Five stars, I'd give it more if I could!

This is the seventh edition of this book which, although apparently written as a text for use in college courses, actually serves very well for those of us who are interested in writing for special audiences, i.e., electronic media and video productions, etc. It's completely up to date and even a little ahead of itself, which is no mean feat in this age of rapid technology. I'm impressed with the way the writing principles and techniques are put across, but mostly with all the examples of what this kind of script should actually look like, on paper. Included are chapters on interviews and talk shows, corporate and children's programs, plays, everything. The book is quite expensive, but when I think about how much it will be referred to and constantly skimmed for new information, I can certainly justify the price. I am a creative writing teacher sometimes and a freelance writer all the time. As the author of The Complete Guide to Writers Groups, Conferences and Workshops (Wiley), I write the subsequent spin-off Ask Eileen column for iUniverse and America Online's Writers Club. I get tons of inquiries about how to write for the new interactive media and find this book a marvelous resource. It covers every aspect, leaves no stone unturned. I'm always referring to books on writers and writing and this one stands more than a cut above the rest. Oh, and one more thing,it's responsible. It doesn't pretend to be a quick-fix to making tons of money; it emphasizes professionalism in the best sense of the word. It's a fine investment, a fine, fine piece of work.

This was not worth the cost!!! It should be in hard cover for the price. Outrageous! One of the first times I felt like sending a book back.

The book came on time before my class start it is neat and not that many marks in the book. I love the price better then the price in my book store

For the size of the book it accomplishes alot. It gives a good overview and understanding of the work out there. It is not an everyman's guide to the area however as the language still uses that art world manner. I can say this however, as a media arts student, when grabbing a small volume for travel or to check some info, this is the one I grab as it covers much of the icons of the field.