Khoi Vinh is the Design Director of NYTimes.com, where he and his design team seek to communicate the prestige of The New York Times via an innovative online user experience. Khoi has his own blog, Subtraction.com, and also recently launched his dog’s blog, Misterpresident.org. Before joining NYTimes.com, Khoi worked with other high-end clients, including HBO and the Smithsonian, through his design firm, Behavior LLC.

In this interview, Khoi takes us behind the scenes at NYTimes.com. He also tells us which skills and sensibilities are, in his opinion, most important for today’s web designer.

Khoi Vinh, from his website Subtraction.com

Q: Please tell us about what you do at NYTimes.com. For example, how is working for an in-house design department different from working for, or in your case founding, a design studio? What are the pros and cons of each environment?

A: Working in house is much more about building long-term relationships and developing a broad understanding of the larger context and the way design figures into the business. (more…)

Although we are well beyond the web’s infancy, developing an effective online business is still not an easy thing to do. A strong brand identity is often what’s missing. Without it, even the best business concepts will struggle and fail. Branding, specifically in an online environment, can be difficult, and there are very few resources out there for businesspeople looking to learn more about the topic.

If you search for books on web business, you’ll find lots that promise eBay riches and many that explain the basics of working from home, but few tackle the serious and challenging topic that is branding. Thankfully, Ian Corcoran does so in his book “The Art of Digital Branding”, and it just might be the only book you need on the subject.

Corcoran’s writing is engaging, even when the topic - IP addresses, domain names, search engine optimization – is unavoidably dry. Some of this content may not be new to the seasoned web designer, but for marketers and business folk, understanding the tech behind website naming is a crucial first step in understanding online branding. And if you’re so confident as to skim, this and all other sections have very handy key point wrap-ups at the end.

As the book delves further into branding, using very current site studies (Ferrari, Puma, and Manchester United to name a few), you’ll learn not only design tips but also a great deal about the psychology of branding. For example, you’ll learn how the brain takes in and makes sense of a company’s brand. (more…)

I’ll pick up where the Queen of Soul left off. What is it going to take for those of us in the design field to get some? From clients who think they are designers. From marketing directors who believe brown doesn’t sell. From employers who think we do nothing but arts and crafts all day. I think I’ve seen it all, yet I’m still in this business. What am I, a glutton for punishment? No, I think I’ve just learned how to get what little respect I need to keep me going.

I was once hired as a Designer by a small book publisher. My predecessor was an administrative employee, who occasionally did some design work on an old Mac Quadra system. Her setup included a 15” Radius monitor. Does anyone remember those? They swiveled from portrait to landscape view. Beautiful. Anyway, the equipment was pathetic. I needed more, but my employers did not understand why. “It worked for her,” they said.

During my first week on the job, I had to schedule a meeting with my new boss and the finance department so that I might make my case for the purchasing of a new design workstation. It was a Christian book publisher, so I decided to compare my plight to that of the Israelite slaves, who while constructing the ancient Egyptian cities, suffered greatly at the hands of the oppressive pharoahs. Much like the slaves, I too was being told to make “bricks without straw”. (more…)

Last Friday, I was speaking with a Marketing Mentor client about two proposals she was about to spend the weekend writing.

She was very excited about these new projects, but when I asked her what the budgets were, she said she didn’t know. It wasn’t that she had neglected to ask that all important question. In fact, she had, but the prospect wasn’t forthcoming with that information. My client didn’t want to push at the time, perhaps because she didn’t wish to annoy or anger this potential customer.

To her, each job was worth at least $20,000, but in reality, she didn’t know if her prospect would be able to afford that. To me, preparing the proposals without first learning this essential information sounded like a potentially colossal waste of her time, not to mention her weekend.

So I suggested she get on the phone before putting pen to paper, and I told her to ask the question that even a client who refuses to give you a budget can’t evade: “Are you thinking $500, $5000, or $25,000?”

Could that work for you? Would your clients answer that simple question?

AJAX, Web 2.0, Ruby on Rails, and a host of other amusing acronyms and phrases are the current buzzwords in web design. Today’s cutting edge sites use these server platforms and programming languages to make web sites jump through hoops for users. What does that mean for Jane Web Designer, who’s serving Jane Business Owner, down in the trenches?

It’s good news actually, because the technology that powers the high-profile dynamic sites (think Amazon.com) is tried and true, and it’s available to everyone with an $8 a month web hosting account.

If coding your own content management system or online shopping cart sounds like a daunting task, I suggest getting your feet wet with PHP includes. We’ll deal with mySQL in a separate post.

Though they’re not the most glamorous bits of code in the world, PHP includes do make life a lot easier. Suppose I have a site all coded and just about ready to launch and the client says, ‘Hey, we’re not ready with the information for page x, can we pull it from the site?’ Do I tear my hair out because I have to change the HTML for the navigation on every page of the site? No. I make one change in one file, upload that changed file, and I’m done.

That file I changed contains just the code for the navigation, and I use PHP to include that code on every page of my site where I want the navigation to go.

So, how can you harness the power of includes? (more…)

LicensArt.com needs a new logo, and they want you to design it! They’re looking for a graphic symbol or icon that elegantly captures and communicates the essence of their unique business model, connecting creativity with commerce. The contest is open to all artists and designers (both professional and non-professional), as well as art students from anywhere in the world. The logo should be vector graphics, not a bitmap image, should be usable in monochrome and color media, including limited colors (say 2 or 3 colors). The logo must be the original work of the submitter. $1,000 (USD) will be awarded to the submitter of the winning design.

Deadline: November 30, 2007
Details:

Search engine optimization is big business these days. Type SEO into Google and you’ll find hundreds of individuals and organizations promising to place your page near the top of the major indexes, for a fee of course.

Unfortunately, it’s rarely that simple, for each search engine has its own secret formula for generating results. Meta tags, links and who knows what else influence these calculations, so there is just no one right answer. However, at the most basic level, (more…)