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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Quite unexpectedly, I woke up this morning to an email from
I voted for you, Mr. Vinh. Subtraction is certainly the best use of bold Helvetica on the web.
What are you going to spend your $20.06 on? And how will you abuse your eternal fame?
well deserved…
Congrats! You got my vote.
Not to put you down or anything, but I voted for Delicious Days. I think the layout is superb, the color scheme is excellent, and it has nice little touches like round corners on the screenshots.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the content you publish… though I tend to read it through my news reader. But I’m not particularly fond of the colorless theme, especially since Macs (and later, PC’s) have had color since, what, the late 80’s? Like, before I can remember?
Anyway, congratulations on even being nominated. That’s much more than I can say for li’l ol’ Deep Thought.
Arden: Thanks for your input regarding color. I just don’t know if I’m ready to give up on my core user type: Web surfers using modern, CSS 2.0-compliant browsers with monochrome displays. I just can’t imagine going to a full-color design and leaving such a big audience behind.
It’s what’s on the inside that counts. Great, easy-to-read content trumps a flashy-color design any day in my eyes.
Congratulations Khoi! You’ve got my vote – love your content and your design!
‘Grats Khoi. I really admire the layout of this site, especially the use of grids – it is by far the most effective advert for grid-style design I’ve seen, and it also pushes the cause that design does not need to equal colour.
To be honest, I view the black / white / occasional-orange scheme to be so much more affective than the pastel-blues in, oh, let’s say Delicious Days. Which is nice, but it’s simply blue / white / orange rather than black / white / orange. Just because it’s lacking in vibrance, doesn’t mean it’s colourless.
Good luck in the voting!
Congrats on the nomination. The visual and informational design of this site is fantastic. It’s a pleasure to visit regularly as well as a lot of fun to explore the posts of the past.
The monochromatic design of subtraction is it’s appeal. Just because you can use color it doesn’t mean you should or have to. Arden, what do you consider the orange of the rollovers, a shade of gray?
I consider it something I didn’t notice, because I usually read this site through NetNewsWire. 😉
To add an opposing voice: I voted for Subtraction because of the lack of colour… and the pixel-perfect grid, incredible attention to detail, and wonderful balance the design has. There are quite enough bright, flashy sites out there–I wouldn’t want to encourage them!
done.
Well, today was my first vist to Subtraction…and I’m not going to waste my time with Delicious Days, or anyone else for that matter. You’ve got my vote, specifically because you may have helped me with my Chrystanthemum garden! I appreciate the no frills approach especially with the glut of flash and color that’s out here in cyberspace. It’s refreshing, you cut to the chase and get the information out there.
Maybe when I get back to blogging, I’ll take a few tips from you Khoi!
Thanks!