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.
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And here I was expecting to see a dozens sketches of grids and tables. Very nice.
Actually that would have been kind of funny.
It’s funny how you’re able to do each of these in an office, while you’re working, while I would have to literally take a lot of time out of my day just to do one (does that say enough about my drawing abilities?).
Specifically I like the sketch of the guy eating a doughnut and drinking coffee, and the profile of the man looking down.
Very beautiful. But as I’m the kind of person that will draw on anything, and go through different notebook styles at different times over a year — I’m far more interested to know what pens you use.
This is great… for more fun, maybe you should look into being a guest artist for The Superest.
These are great. I would love to even see more posts like this. I have to say that this is something that I wish I did more often. My ability to do quick, fun sketches has rapidly gone downhill since middle school. Perhaps it is just making the effort to have a book and pen always at ready. Either way you have sparked an old interest. Thank you.
Superheros, and cowboys seem to fit in well today.
Very nice, but I am a little surprises that you only fill one small moleskine notebook. But then again you might just be a loose-paper-person.
Nice doodles! I like the 70s Captain Marvel.
Joey: I’m a longtime devotee of Sanford Uni-ball Roller pens in the 0.5mm Micro size. I’ve been using them for over a decade and have one with me almost every waking minute. I also use the blue ink version exclusively.
Dominik: I try to keep everything I write down inside the one notebook, so it’s always in one place. It helps to have small handwriting, which I do.
I know pen devotees are often stubborn in their selections (I have yet to find one I truly adore, or that would be my case as well), but have you tried the Uniball 207? It’s a gel pen, but I find the mechanics very similar to their rollerballs. The orange ink is surprisingly nice too. It’s a nice alternative to the Pilot G2. They actually sent me a sample pack in the mail to my office. They must know I’m still looking for my Holy Grail pen…
PS You show amazing control with these sketches! They must be, what, an inch tall at the most at actual size?
I just caught a bunch of grief here at our studio for requesting Uni-ball Micro pens throughout… Nice to see I’m not alone in my obesession, Khoi. 🙂
I tend to draw through every meeting I’m in–maybe that means every meeting I’ve been to thus far has been ‘less than engaging’ (!)–but I find that it helps focus the part of my brain that needs to think about business stuff while the creative side goes on a visual rampage. It’s a bit like when a mother is grocery shopping or balancing a checkbook while keeping an eye on the kid running around in his Superman outfit screaming; both parties are doing what they want, and more stuff gets done because of it.
There’s some nice ones in the mix.
You can really draw… I recently stopped packing a Moleskine and bought a wacom… which means that I capture more and DRAW more…
And I still carry a notebook as well…
Yeah! Captain Marvel! C.C. Beck’s art is great.
I always loved the whole marvel family thing, and I still think there are some great SHAZAM stories to be written.
Sorry to nerd out here.