Last night’s talk was the last in AIGA’s Incite/Insight series. Labeled “See” it came courtesy of Hillman Curtis. I’ll have to admit, I had my reservations and prejudices going into the talk. I thought he was going to come in and preach about usability and simplicity, how much Flash rocks and how cool and trendy it is to be a New York/New Media Designer.

Boy, was a I wrong.

As opposed to the first talk in the series, this one was sold out and buzzing with interactivey excitement. The talk revolved around Hillman’s philosophy and the way he approaches projects. Nothing extraordinarily new, we all aspire to some of the same principles/goals, but what was truly amazing was his simplicity and no nonsense approach. What most impressed me was his admittance of the greatness in other people’s work, something you don’t hear very often from designers. He applauded work by Tibor Kalman, Kyle Cooper and, to my chagrin, Bradley from gmunk.com. He revealed that he is scared of — and challenged by — these people, of the quality of work they are capable of and that he himself aspires to do.

Inspiration was a recurring theme in the talk — as well as theme was a recurring one — and he had some interesting projects to show us how he and his team use everyday inspiration for their work. This is something else that got my attention, he gave lot of credit to his team, one more thing you don’t hear much of from big-name designers.

In conclusion: Hillman Curtis is inspiring, smart, funny as hell and does excellent work. And he is a great speaker.

Hats off to Connie for putting this series together.

Thanks for the book (wink wink.)

PS. If you need somebody to round out the series to Hear. Touch. See. Speak. you know who to call.

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