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Mike Phillips' Art of Detailing Book Report
Sorry for the long review, but a book like this deserves a good book report.
I have spent a lot of time on detailing forums learning and sharing what I can about detailing. In fact, the whole reason I ever build my website was because I was tired of answering the same questions over and over and over again. When someone asks “What is the best product to use for XXX” the answer generally isn’t a two word kind of deal. Those are the kinds of questions that huge articles are made of.
The problem I’ve always had is trying to reach everybody with the article. I’ve been a corporate trainer for the past fifteen years and have studied adult learning theory quite a bit in that time. Adults are not like kids. Kids like to just have their head unscrewed and get the information poured in. Adults need to know the reason why they need to learn something and they need practical application. Trying to reach people at different stages in life with different skill sets and experiences is very very difficult. When trying to write something useful about detailing it has to reach the novice and the expert alike in order for it to be what I would consider to be ‘Good Stuff’. Most of what I write is somewhere in the middle and I most likely scare off the beginner novices and bore the experts.
There have been a lot of others who have tried to do what I did. Some are writing guides for specific makes and models of cars. Some write about one particular part of the process. Some really go out of their way to document as much as they can. I’ve tried to read and learn from the best and there really has been some good stuff written out there.
I received my copy of Mike Phillips’ Art of Detailing book yesterday and read it from cover to cover. My opinion of this book comes from several different directions. First as a professional trainer I can tell you that the book is following the correct principles of instructional design. I don’t know if he was trying to follow Blooms Taxonomy or not, but he did a great job if it was by accident. Blooms Taxonomy can be summed up in six questions: Can the learner remember what was taught? Can the learner explain the concepts? Can the learner use the information in a new way? Can the learner distinquish between the different parts? Can the learner justify a decision based on the material? Can the learner create a new point of view? In anything I’ve created as an instructional designer I’ve had to ask those six questions of the material before I can deliver it. Mike’s book will score a resounding YES to all six of those questions by anyone who reads it. Not just the beginners, but also the more advanced detailers and professionals. Even now I have some of his metaphors running through my head which explain things I already knew in a way that I believe I’ll be able to get a better shine as a result of the explanation. It is literally a text book for detailing.
My other point of view comes as a detailer. I’m a weekend warrior like many of you are. I detail maybe 40 or 50 cars in any given year. However, because this hobby takes me away from my family, I am always looking for ways to speed up the process while still getting great results. I moved beyond just washing my cars into actually detailing them in about 1996 or 97. Ever since then I’ve been obsessed with shine. I always tell people I wouldn’t last ten seconds as a fish. The first shiny thing I saw would probably be a hook and I’d be done for. Anyway, I feel like I’m one of the pioneers in the whole online detailing forum world. I am member #532 on Autopia and spent two or three years reading every word posted on that site and others. But after all these years of reading and learning, I feel like this book took me back to school. I have been over complicating some of my processes and I’m embarrassed to admit that some of my processes turned into the shortcuts I tell other people to avoid. As a detailer who knows his stuff, this book put me back on the right path in several of my processes.
My point of view as an enthusiast is that this book will teach you things about paint that you never knew. Do you know when they first started clear coating cars? What is the difference between a 1995 clear coated car and a 2011 clear coated car? How much product do you really need to use on your pad? These answers and others were fascinating to read about. Some of them I kind of already knew, but Mike has an expert way of explaining it that only someone with decades of experience can. I half expect car polish and paint to pump through that man’s veins if you checked. As an enthusiast I couldn’t put this book down because it was an absolute page turner for me. I never felt lost or confused or that information was missing. There is a lot about detailing which isn’t included in this book, but Mike doesn’t ever hint to those things, so you don’t ever feel like you are left hanging or that things are left unexplained.
There are pictures in this book which show things that most articles leave out. As one who likes to write guides like this, I learned a lot about what to take pictures of to really show off what I’m trying to explain. The great thing about this book is that it answers every question it raises either with great pictures or great explanations. Really it is the pictures that sell it. This review looks like crap because it is just a wall of text, but this book is laid out in three columns per page with no fewer than probably four or five pictures per page on average. It isn’t just a picture book, but someone just getting started will definitely have what they need to understand the art of detailing.
I guess my bottom line on this book is that it is about a topic very near and dear to my heart. This book is 100% about the process of detailing. That is where the art comes in. You can get a showroom shine with any one a thousand products. Sure there are products spotlighted in this book, but the book is about the art and process of getting the shine regardless of your products. It teaches you what can and cannot be fixed and how to go about fixing it. It is an outstanding book for detailers on any level because it centers you on the correct process of detailing and lets you take it from there. I am looking forward to what I hope will be Mike’s next book called The Advanced Art of Detailing, or something like that. Hopefully something like that is in the works, but I think right now he deserves a little well deserved R&R from the keyboard after putting together a great guide. Phenomenal work, Mike!
Sorry for the long review, but a book like this deserves a good book report.
I have spent a lot of time on detailing forums learning and sharing what I can about detailing. In fact, the whole reason I ever build my website was because I was tired of answering the same questions over and over and over again. When someone asks “What is the best product to use for XXX” the answer generally isn’t a two word kind of deal. Those are the kinds of questions that huge articles are made of.
The problem I’ve always had is trying to reach everybody with the article. I’ve been a corporate trainer for the past fifteen years and have studied adult learning theory quite a bit in that time. Adults are not like kids. Kids like to just have their head unscrewed and get the information poured in. Adults need to know the reason why they need to learn something and they need practical application. Trying to reach people at different stages in life with different skill sets and experiences is very very difficult. When trying to write something useful about detailing it has to reach the novice and the expert alike in order for it to be what I would consider to be ‘Good Stuff’. Most of what I write is somewhere in the middle and I most likely scare off the beginner novices and bore the experts.
There have been a lot of others who have tried to do what I did. Some are writing guides for specific makes and models of cars. Some write about one particular part of the process. Some really go out of their way to document as much as they can. I’ve tried to read and learn from the best and there really has been some good stuff written out there.
I received my copy of Mike Phillips’ Art of Detailing book yesterday and read it from cover to cover. My opinion of this book comes from several different directions. First as a professional trainer I can tell you that the book is following the correct principles of instructional design. I don’t know if he was trying to follow Blooms Taxonomy or not, but he did a great job if it was by accident. Blooms Taxonomy can be summed up in six questions: Can the learner remember what was taught? Can the learner explain the concepts? Can the learner use the information in a new way? Can the learner distinquish between the different parts? Can the learner justify a decision based on the material? Can the learner create a new point of view? In anything I’ve created as an instructional designer I’ve had to ask those six questions of the material before I can deliver it. Mike’s book will score a resounding YES to all six of those questions by anyone who reads it. Not just the beginners, but also the more advanced detailers and professionals. Even now I have some of his metaphors running through my head which explain things I already knew in a way that I believe I’ll be able to get a better shine as a result of the explanation. It is literally a text book for detailing.
My other point of view comes as a detailer. I’m a weekend warrior like many of you are. I detail maybe 40 or 50 cars in any given year. However, because this hobby takes me away from my family, I am always looking for ways to speed up the process while still getting great results. I moved beyond just washing my cars into actually detailing them in about 1996 or 97. Ever since then I’ve been obsessed with shine. I always tell people I wouldn’t last ten seconds as a fish. The first shiny thing I saw would probably be a hook and I’d be done for. Anyway, I feel like I’m one of the pioneers in the whole online detailing forum world. I am member #532 on Autopia and spent two or three years reading every word posted on that site and others. But after all these years of reading and learning, I feel like this book took me back to school. I have been over complicating some of my processes and I’m embarrassed to admit that some of my processes turned into the shortcuts I tell other people to avoid. As a detailer who knows his stuff, this book put me back on the right path in several of my processes.
My point of view as an enthusiast is that this book will teach you things about paint that you never knew. Do you know when they first started clear coating cars? What is the difference between a 1995 clear coated car and a 2011 clear coated car? How much product do you really need to use on your pad? These answers and others were fascinating to read about. Some of them I kind of already knew, but Mike has an expert way of explaining it that only someone with decades of experience can. I half expect car polish and paint to pump through that man’s veins if you checked. As an enthusiast I couldn’t put this book down because it was an absolute page turner for me. I never felt lost or confused or that information was missing. There is a lot about detailing which isn’t included in this book, but Mike doesn’t ever hint to those things, so you don’t ever feel like you are left hanging or that things are left unexplained.
There are pictures in this book which show things that most articles leave out. As one who likes to write guides like this, I learned a lot about what to take pictures of to really show off what I’m trying to explain. The great thing about this book is that it answers every question it raises either with great pictures or great explanations. Really it is the pictures that sell it. This review looks like crap because it is just a wall of text, but this book is laid out in three columns per page with no fewer than probably four or five pictures per page on average. It isn’t just a picture book, but someone just getting started will definitely have what they need to understand the art of detailing.
I guess my bottom line on this book is that it is about a topic very near and dear to my heart. This book is 100% about the process of detailing. That is where the art comes in. You can get a showroom shine with any one a thousand products. Sure there are products spotlighted in this book, but the book is about the art and process of getting the shine regardless of your products. It teaches you what can and cannot be fixed and how to go about fixing it. It is an outstanding book for detailers on any level because it centers you on the correct process of detailing and lets you take it from there. I am looking forward to what I hope will be Mike’s next book called The Advanced Art of Detailing, or something like that. Hopefully something like that is in the works, but I think right now he deserves a little well deserved R&R from the keyboard after putting together a great guide. Phenomenal work, Mike!
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