Web Design of the Times

Khoi Vinh has emerged as a leading critical voice in the evolving discipline of web information design. He talks about the challenges of integrating traditional and internet design

by Steven Heller

Since 2006, Khoi Vinh has been the design director of NYTimes.com, where he and his staff of information architects and designers are responsible for the look and feel of the Times's website. On his blog, Subtraction.com, he addresses key questions about web standards and the marriage of design and technology. Last fall, Vinh and editor Liz Danzico launched Abriefmessage.com, where contributors critique design topics within an imposed length of 200 words or less.

Born in Saigon, Vietnam, in 1971, Vinh immigrated to the United States in 1973 and was raised in Gaithersburg, Maryland. After his family moved to the Los Angeles area in 1989, Vinh enrolled at L.A.'s Otis College of Art and Design, where his interests shifted from illustration to graphic design. After graduating, he turned his attention to new media and moved to New York to pursue web design. In 2001 he co-founded Behavior, a boutique interaction firm that designed websites for clients as diverse as JPMorgan Chase and The Onion. In recent years, he has been an advocate of integrating "traditional design" and internet design, and yet he fully understands the limitations of this still primitive form. Nonetheless, he is attempting to build a new genre of designer. Here, he explains the challenges to a former New York Times employee, art director, author, and critic, Steven Heller.

Heller: What's new, in the medium that you are so avidly a part of?

Vinh: Designing outward rather than inward. We're entering a new era of design where the brands and experiences we create are no longer closely held, highly controlled cathedrals, but rather bazaars of commerce and conversation.

What do you mean by "bazaars of conversation"? Does this imply the audience is an active participant in the process of design?

Historically, graphic design has been a discipline that deals in control, in creating carefully managed, organized experiences that are then distributed to people to be consumed in whole. Digital media has upended that equation, and now—yes—the audience is an active participant in the process of design. In fact, the process is now a conversation between designers and users. Look at the way interfaces evolve over time to accommodate the needs of users. What's old is the idea that reaching new audiences through digital means can be done in the traditional, one-to-many fashion of imposed narratives and regimented consumption. Design and designers now have to mingle with the masses in order to make meaningful connections.

How does a designer do this and not get sucked into the pitfalls of consensus?

There is a real difference between a majority consensus and earnestly engaging in an ongoing conversation with real people about the solutions designers can provide them. It's not about taking a vote; it's about listening to what users are responding to in a design and identifying the unexpected things people are doing with it. For the most part, this is a way of thinking that is expressed most clearly in interfaces for digital products. But it's also a way of thinking that should be integrated into how brands evolve, how companies relate to their customers, and whether design can help mediate that relationship more fruitfully for both parties.

You began as an illustrator, then veered into design and ultimately into the web. From this perspective, what does the future hold for the "new" designers?

For the foreseeable future, designers are going to continue to work in a fluid, somewhat unstable environment. So it remains to be seen to what extent those skills—illustration and print design—will translate online. In some respects, they've always relied on fairly fixed, knowable boundaries, which makes their future uncertain.

And what does this mean?

This means we'll continue experimenting, fumbling, learning, and accruing new, workable rules for how designers will participate in this space alongside the users.