One-world advocates, e-commerce proponents, and digital home dilettantes clamor loudly about the endless possibilities of the Web. Designer Hillman Curtis, widely considered the premiere motion graphics producer on the Web today, is more skeptical.

"The Web is a limited environment. That means that interactive designers are like industrial designers. There's a thrill to finding the technical possibilities within those limitations, but if it takes a long time to load the graphic, or if it chucks on any machine that's less than 200 mhz, we've failed on that technical end."

For instance, in a title spot Curtis did for Lycos, a green line moves swiftly across the screen, and then the word "discover" emerges, in a space-age font. Those letters spin into "fun," which then spin into "educate." At the bottom of the screen, a series of frames appears and one opens to show a young girl lifting the lid on her lap top and then turning to the camera and smiling. "Educate" spins into "share" and the image of her enlarges and fades. Then the words "research," "inspire," and "interact" appear, all in sequence, while a photo of a 20-something man appears in a bottom frame. Finally, "future," "headlines," and "global" appear, accompanied by a more middled-aged business man thoughtfully rubbing his chin. The spot ends with the words "travel," "leisure," "trading" and "community."

This is simple stuff, and a blessed relief from both the visual cacophony of some Web sites and download times so long you can pay your bills, pop popcorn, or brush the dog. "The emotional message is simply that Lycos has something for everyone, even your daughter," Curtis says. "But we made the text very futuristic to add to that simple picture."

Curtis's emphasis on dancing words - many of his spots have letters that rotate, expand, and shrink - comes from the influence of Kyle Cooper, whose film titles carry their own narrative, often ones that are rather dark. In a spot for Lycos Interactive Zone (a product which never actually got to market), for instance, Curtis spelled out the words in several different fonts, then took polaroid pictures of them and scanned them back in. "It makes it look like the letters are radiating light," Curtis says, "so it's a little scary."

Curtis's educational background lacks the fine art or graphic design degrees that carry such cachet in today's design world - he studied creative writing and film at San Francisco State University before dropping out to tour Europe with a rock band in the mid-80s. He worked briefly as a "static" page designer, however, experience that is abundantly clear in his motion graphics.

"I think you should be able to stop an animation at any point and have it look good," he says. " In that sense, we have one foot in traditional graphic design. But with our other foot, we are constantly pushing the envelope."

Besides his technical powress - he skillfully juggles the use of Macromedia Flash, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Premiere, Curtis pushes the envelope by eschewing all that is flashy, busy, or superficially complex. "People who use computers are developing what I call 'multi-tasking attention deficit,'" he says. "They're using the computer and listening to headphones or there's a bunch of stuff happening around them at the office. If you fail to take that multi-tasking reality into consideration, you'll lose the audience. Heavy Web design - with loading bars and gratuitous animation - just gets in the way of the message. "

In that sense, designing for the Web has "made me a better designer," he notes, "because it keeps me more focused. It appeals to the minimalist in me."

When the Curtis design team works on designs, they often jot down the words the client uses most often, so they can figure out what graphical element should be the central focus. "When we were doing the Iomega spot the client kept saying things like, 'anxiety-provoking,' 'security,' 'approaching,' he says. "We knew the idea of a hard disk crashing without back-up was scary for people, but we didn't want it to be too scary. We wanted the final message to be that Iomega offers security."

The resulting online ads all feature the words "Y2K is coming" and then show images of innocent computer users with their backs to approaching disasters - a huge ocean wave, a herd of bulls, an oncoming train. The images are humorous, but the message is clear: you, the computer user, are about to be overcome by something rather dreadful. The ads then sequeway into the reassuring words, "Safely move your information from this millenium" and then "Backup," "Update," "Protect."

Curtis also makes use of swirling geometrical shapes and wire frames. "Partly it's our clients," he says simply. "Hewlett Packard is now using a garage metaphor for their marketing and 3Com uses a house as a logo for their HomeConnect product. But partly it's that geometrical designs make excellent transitional effects. If you have something very heavy loading on stage right, you can swing a 3D graphic element to the left and draw the viewer's eye to the left, which gives you a chance to sneak in that heavy element while they're not looking."

The recent animation that Curtis did for Hewlett Packard features a rotating garage image and tells the story of the early days of HP. It's one of his most innovative, and most advanced, spots, as it offers seamless stream of images. "This is super exciting," he says, "because went hand in hand with what was going out on broadcast. The spot is also driven by a voice over by the CEO, which makes it truly rich media. It's the closest we've come to offering a brodcast-like commercial experience online."

That is exciting. But it's also straightforward, so straightforward, in fact, that one of the spot's own phrases could easily apply to the man who created it: "so simple it was radical."

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