Big Think Interview With Khoi Vinh | Big Think

Big Think Interview With Khoi Vinh

New videos DAILY

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A conversation with the blogger and design director of the New York Times website.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Khoi Vinh:

Khoi Vinh was born in 1971 in Saigon, Vietnam, and immigrated to the United States three and a half years later. He graduated in 1993 from Otis College of Art and Design, where he majored in communication design with a focus on illustration. In 2001, he joined several colleagues in founding Behavior, a design studio, which he helped manage and run for four years. Since January 2006, he has worked at The New York Times as the Design Director for NYTimes.com. Vinh also writes about design at his personal blog, Subtraction (Subtraction.com).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

Khoi Vinh: My name's Khoi Vinh, I am the Design Director at www.NYTimes.com, and I am also the author of a weblog at www.Subtraction.com.

Question: What does your day-to-day work as a designerrnconsist of?

Khoi Vinh: Well mostly it's about sitting in meetings. I spend a lot of time -- the way I lookrnat my job, I spend a lot of time trying to create the conditions for goodrndesign to happen and I don't get an opportunity to do a lot of hands onrnwork. Really, our mission in therndesign group is really to try and look at NYTimes.com, to look at the digitalrndelivery of New York Times content and create a really great user experiencernout of it and build new features and functionalities. So, that just requires a lot of background discussions andrnnegotiations and brainstorming and getting the right people together at therntable. So, that's largely what Irndo is try and get all those pieces in place so the designers who work in myrngroup can then sort of set them up for a really great user experience on thernwebsite, and on our other platforms.

Question: How would you characterize your own style as arndesigner?

Khoi Vinh: Well, I think that -- the way I put ourrnsensibility at NYTimes.com group also nicely meshes with mine. I try to get a maximum of elegance withrna minimum of ornamentation, so we're trying to do as much as we can with asrnlittle as we can. So that meansrnusing as many native elements of whatever medium you are working in withoutrntrying to introduce other flourishes and making the most of those torncommunicate elegance and ease of use and efficiency.

Question: Has there ever been a characterization of yourrnstyle that you’ve hated?

Khoi Vinh: Yes, and no. I think I sort of have a love/hate relationship with arnreputation I have for being the designer who works with grids. And maybe about four years ago, four orrnfive years ago, I wrote a series of articles on my blogs, Subtraction.com, thatrnreally talked about how online designers, interaction designers can benefitrnfrom a lot of the topographic grid principles that print designers have beenrnusing for decades offline, and that was really a big boost to my career, myrnreputation, and I'm still quite proud of it. At the same time, I often feelrnlike that's all people think of me for and if I want to talk about somethingrnelse, then they kind of tune out. rnThat's not always the case, that's maybe not a fair characterization,rnbut from time to time, it happens.

Question: Is your personal workspace messy or orderly?

Khoi Vinh: I really try to keep my personal workspace asrntidy as possible. I really believernthere's a place for everything and everything in its place, as the clichérngoes. I really try to do thatrninsofar as I can control it. Irnlive with a really wonderful woman and we have a baby and a dog, so at the samerntime, I really have to temper that desire to really control that element withrnthe realization that life doesn't work like that. Like you have to have a balance and understand that as muchrnas you would like to have absolute control over everything, it's just notrnrealistic.

Question: How has the New York Times website design evolvedrnduring your time at the paper?

Khoi Vinh: Well, when I came in, in 2006, they were in thernmiddle of putting together a new redesign of the site and I helped them finishrnthat off and get that launched. rnAnd since that time, it's early 2010 now, for almost four years, we'vernbeen sort of relentlessly revising bits and pieces of the site, adding newrnfunctionality to it, manipulating her here and there to respond to differentrnuser needs, different business criteria and so forth. So, I think the change has been significant though veryrnincrementally paced.

Read the full transcript at