Hillman Curtis

David Hillman Curtis (February 24, 1961 – April 18, 2012) was an American new media designer, author, musician and filmmaker. Curtis was the Principal and Chief Creative Officer of hillmancurtis.com, inc., a digital design and film production firm in New York City. Curtis was successful in several creative disciplines; he started as a rock musician, became a pioneer in Web Design and interactive design with Flash and finally made short films and advertising commercials.

Curtis was born in La Jolla, San Diego, California, where he grew up with his two sisters and his mother Susan and stepfather, Paul Zimmerman, both of whom were high school teachers. After schooling he studied creative writing and film theory at San Francisco State University.

Subsequently, while studying at the San Francisco State University, he formed a rock group, which was later called 'the Green Things'. In the coming decade, the band toured and even recorded an album with MCA Records, before disbanding. Curtis first came to prominence as one of the principal songwriters and bassists for the new wave group "Mrs. Green", which was formed while Curtis was attending San Francisco State University. The group recorded one album and toured the U.K. They toured briefly with the New Zealand band The Chills, and member of a beatles revival cover band. Curtis later split off from the band and, forming a new group called The Greenthings. Although The Greenthings signed a recording contract with [MCA Records] an album was never released.

Curtis started studying art to design posters and fliers for his band. After the band broke up, Curtis now in his 30s started taking night classes on Photoshop. This led to a few part-time designing jobs, and eventually an entry level job at Macromedia. Gradually, he went on to become a design director at Macromedia. While there in 1996 he designed the first web site using new technology, a browser plug-in Flash Player, which became a milestone in web signing.

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