Khoi Vinh

I'm a big fan of typographically-driven design. One of the benefits is small file sizes and fewer network calls. Here are a few of my favourites, although they may be getting a little dated now: https://www.subtraction.com https://ia.net/writer http://webtypography.net http://paperbackauthor.com [1] --- [1] This one is actually for my own work-in-progress.

As you pointed out, Usability Post is one of my favorites, and SvN is clearly a leader. Boxes and Arrows (http://www.boxesandarrows.com/) is also pretty rad. I keep an eye on Subtraction (http://subtraction.com/), Khoi Vihn's mostly personal blog, too. He's the interaction designer for NYTimes, second to none...other than our own Loc Ngo, of course.

I don't see why people need to use Bootstrap at all. What's wrong with starting from scratch? Sure, Bootstrap has a lot of best practices you can copy / paste, but so do tons of other boilerplate projects on GitHub. I also don't see why people need to use grids. Grids are meant for graphic design (ie. http://subtraction.com/pics/0703/grids_are_good.pdf) and architecture, not CSS. What's wrong with margins, paddings and media queries?

What exactly makes Khoi Vinh's website[1] notable? Not trying to be negative; I'm genuinely curious. I wouldn't have given it a second thought if I came across it in the wild. To my (untrained) eye, it's typography consists of a single font that is almost always too small to be readable. [1] http://www.subtraction.com/

Some relevant writing on unsolicited redesigns from last year, worth bearing in mind in this context, by - Lukas Mathis: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/05/15/unsolicited_redesigns/ - Khoi Vinh: http://www.subtraction.com/2011/07/28/unsolicited-redesigns - Andy Rutledge: http://andyrutledge.com/journalism.php

The book he recommends for grids[1] isn't available yet (and has no release date). As an alternative perhaps Khoi Vinh's Ordering Disorder[2]. [1] http://www.fivesimplesteps.com/products/a-practical-guide-to-designing… [2] http://www.subtraction.com/2010/11/05/i-wrote-a-book

Khoi Vinh (http://subtraction.com) and I made something called Shorty (http://get-shorty.com). It was the first URL shortener you could install on your own server. I built Shorty in high school. It's absolutely dreadful code; hopefully I'll rewrite it sometime after I graduate college. Last Christmas I built a webapp that displays my iTunes music library. I can't show it to you though, because then you'd max my home's bandwidth.

The NYTimes example is by Khoi Vinh (http://www.subtraction.com/). He's certainly no design slouch, particularly when it comes to grid based layouts. NYTimes is an enormously complex site. Given the ridiculous number of priorities they have to juggle, and number of people they have to please, I think they do an admirable job. The site has to balance looking like a historic newspaper with the constraints of the web. I particularly like Vinh and Boulton's presentation "Grids are Good" http://www.lifeclever.com/khoi-vinh-mark-boulton-grids-are-good/ which applies a grid layout to a Yahoo type homepage.

His site has different priorities than a newspaper, but I've always been fond of Khoi Vinh's titles on http://subtraction.com, which have been consistently good even since before he started working at the NYT.

Looks good. Design point: I'd try to stick with a grid. The "beta" text seems to have a random position off to the right, and while the table of example searches are functional, they could use some consistent cell padding. On the search page itself it'd be great if you tried to align the left margin better. Right now the top bar hangs out, which makes the page flow poorly for the eye. In general, reduce number of vertical columns of alignment. A grid helps that. That's my advice. Read this blog post / attached PDF -- it's fantastic: http://www.subtraction.com/archives/2007/0318_oh_yeeaahh.php

Just realized that the "blogs" category in my Feedly has 347 entries in it, and about half of them haven't published in more than 3 months. Here are some that are prolific and good: https://marginalrevolution.com/ Marginal Revolution: wide-ranging and prolific blog about economics and culture. https://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com Anecdotal Evidence: well-written personal blog, mostly observations on books. https://krebsonsecurity.com/ Krebs on Security: about information security. It's written for a popular audience, which is about the level at which I understand the subject. https://mjtsai.com/blog/ Michael Tsai: collects quotes from other people about ongoing software-related news. https://acquisitiontalk.com Acquisition Talk: about weapons system acquisition, government procurement, etc. Something I wanted to follow because it's a huge sector that doesn't get a lot of attention. https://www.futilitycloset.com/ Futility Closet: wunderkammer-style blog with historical miscellany, quotes, puzzles, etc. Also a great podcast. https://www.tor.com/tag/jo-walton-reads/ Jo Walton's Reading List: Not strictly a blog, but it's in my RSS feeds. I like to see what she's reading lately, and sometimes I get good recommendations from her (e.g. KJ Parker). https://www.bldgblog.com/ BLDGBLOG: about design, architecture, etc. https://www.thisiscolossal.com/ Colossal: about art and design. https://www.subtraction.com/ Subtraction: about design

I made it for fun, but it ended up being kind of useful. I say to Siri "record my weigh" and it response "how much do you weight?" I say the number and it records that number, along with the data and time, in a Google spreadsheet. Khoi Vinh wrote about shortcuts on his blog[1]. He uses one to automatically archive screenshots to a particular Evernote notebook. [1]:https://www.subtraction.com/2019/12/04/shortcuts-and-screenshots-on-io…

Virgin America's are similar[1] and I really liked the way they did it. 1: https://www.subtraction.com/2014/10/13/virgin-america-boarding-pass/

Believe it or not, you can alt-tab on an iPad now if you have a keyboard hooked up. https://www.subtraction.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015-06-08-ios9… And while iOS won't give you a local terminal, remote servers are in reach with a pretty nice SSH client: https://panic.com/prompt/ Text selection on a touchscreen still sucks compared to a mouse, unfortunately. Still, if an IDE can hit most/all of your needs, I can see iOS working pretty well as a programming environment. Apple's Swift Playgrounds in iOS 10 feels like a first step toward them bringing Xcode over.

I forgot to actually link to the item: [0] - http://www.subtraction.com/2014/07/09/looks-by-dr-dre/

Another interesting aspect of your link shortener is that it gives credit on the linked page to the person who shared it. Khoi Vinh had a very interesting idea[1] like this for the New York Times' pay wall, but Snip.ly works for any site. [1]: http://www.subtraction.com/2014/02/12/an-idea-for-the-times-pay-wall/

2006?, nice. So yeah these days typography is big on web design, but also obviously relative to the kind of site your building. Regarding Khoi Vinh’s Web Site, I like this page in particular http://www.subtraction.com/archives#column-b

He was the Design Director for NYTimes from 2006 - 2010. The re-design he refers to is a critique of the NYTimes website. [1] Regarding the footer disclaimer, it's probably because his newspaper-like blog/site design is also sold as a Word Press theme. [2] I wouldn't call him the Steve Jobs of his industry, but he has been a big proponent for (what I consider clean design with) grids. [3] [1] http://www.subtraction.com/about [2] http://basicmaths.subtraction.com/ [3] http://www.subtraction.com/2004/12/31/grid-computi

There's a new book from Khoi Vinh, just read it and liked it a lot. Also it's the first book on applying grid based design on web sites instead of print: http://www.subtraction.com/2010/11/05/i-wrote-a-book

Indeed, a bunch of New York executive wages over an 18 month period start to add up. Khoi Vin (former art director) pondered this on his blog a few weeks ago [1], citing it as one of the reasons he resigned his post. [1] http://www.subtraction.com/2011/03/18/what-the-nyt-pay-wall-really-cos…

A hell of a lot of interviews in there---Some smart people weighing in. Though maybe Dadich, father of the Wired iPad app, is the OPPOSITE of design that gets out of the way of the reading experience? Check out these posts for more: http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/wired-on-ipad-just-like-a-paper… http://www.subtraction.com/2010/10/27/my-ipad-magazine-stand

if you like this, this guy's style reminds me a lot of Khoi Vinh's, who also has done a famous realignment mockup: http://www.subtraction.com/2009/09/15/our-craigslist

A couple that come to mind: http://subtraction.com http://cubancouncil.com http://madebyelephant.com http://jasonsantamaria.com http://markboulton.co.uk http://hicksdesign.co.uk

He's talking about grids for page layout, not for columns of data. Example: http://www.subtraction.com/archives/2007/0402_layers_cake.php

I have no artistic talent whatsoever, but now that I've learned to use grids I can churn pretty reasonable designs. Here's a good intro: http://www.subtraction.com/pics/0703/grids_are_good.pdf

Disclaimer: Android user. Every time I'm up to get a new phone I come this close to switching to iPhone. My wife has one, and I've switched to Macs. But there are certain utilitarian functions that keep me on Android. As of the last two design revs, though, I also have an aesthetic aversion to the iPhone. Gruber describes the jewelry or fine watch-like quality very well. But I don't wear jewelry or fine watches. (Ok, I wear a wedding ring, but it's a plain band.) Maybe I'm just a philistine, but there's something about old original Motorola Droids that are at this point beaten up and worn that have a really nice aged, aesthetic weight to them. It's a sentiment similar to the one Khoi Vinh lays out here: http://www.subtraction.com/2007/07/16/designed-det but not quite, because I think smart phones become obsolete too quickly for 'designed deterioration' to be realistic. Maybe it's more that I don't want to feel that precious about these objects. I like to be able to not have to worry that much about taking care of my phone, to be able to toss it around without worrying about damage. Or maybe it's just an emotional, class-based aversion to luxury goods because I grew up in working class conditions.

The two main designers that started the grid-craze were Mark Boulton and Khoi Vinh. Some resources from them: http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/five-simple-steps-to-des… http://www.subtraction.com/2004/12/31/grid-computi How to use grids? It is usually as simple as adding some css, divs and classes. At its most basic, you can use a gridpaper background or this javascript gridder: http://gridder.andreehansson.se/ that works well with the http://960.gs grid framework. Why I use grids? - maintainability and cooperation - visual consistency across browsers - less development time spent with display bugs Why I don't use grids? - Can become a bit boring/holding you back - Not all designs work with even columns (for example those based on the golden ratio) - Code bloat (you are using divs like columns and rows, in almost the same way one would layout a page with tables, also devs sometimes forget to remove the unused classes from the production CSS)