is a blog about design, technology and culture written by Khoi Vinh, and has been more or less continuously published since December 2000 in New York City. Khoi is currently Principal Designer at Adobe. Previously, Khoi was co-founder and CEO of Mixel (acquired in 2013), Design Director of The New York Times Online, and co-founder of the design studio Behavior, LLC. He is the author of “How They Got There: Interviews with Digital Designers About Their Careers”and “Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design,” and was named one of Fast Company’s “fifty most influential designers in America.” Khoi lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his wife and three children.
Always be launching, that’s my motto. Over the past six months I’ve been lucky enough to bring several of my projects to fruition. Back in November, we launched Wildcard for iPhone, the world’s first browser for cards. Just before the holidays, Kidpost, the family photo sharing tool I’ve been working on with friends, ended its public beta and officially launched to the public. Earlier this month, I released my book How They Got There: Interviews with Digital Designers About Their Careers. And yesterday, my collaboration with Adobe, Comp CC, an iPad app for design exploration, debuted in the App Store. Whew.
I have a one or two additional projects in the works, too, but all of these started life about eighteen months ago, in the late summer and early fall of 2013, when I closed the final chapter on my startup, Mixel. For the first time in many years, I was finally able to indulge multiple interests at once. It’s been tremendous fun, but not always easy, especially while raising three kids and maintaining a healthy personal life with my wife.
Along the way I’ve used lots of tools and techniques to juggle all of these projects, but if I had to name one that has been absolutely indispensable along the way, it would be Todoist, my to-do manager of choice. I’m already on record as a fan; in 2013 I wrote about it in this blog post, marking roughly six years as a user. Another two years later and I’m only using it more than I was then. Every workday morning I sit down with Todoist on my Mac, and throughout the day I add things to it on my iPhone, iPad or Android devices. It’s an absolutely essential part of how I work.
All of which is to say that Doist, the amazing company behind the software, is launching Todoist 10 for iOS today. The new version is slicker, smarter and more capable, but in keeping with its history, it’s still exceedingly simple, intuitive and deferential to users’ needs. I’ve been beta testing it for several weeks and its been a seamless transition from the previous versions—it’s just like it was before, but better. As always, Todoist is free to start using; you may actually find the free tier to be so compelling that you may never need the premium version, but I’m so passionate about this software I pay for it anyway, because I never want it to go away. Try it for yourself at todoist.com.
