Designers from start to finish now in digital media have to think in a much more sort of thoughtful serious and humble way about how design audiences will receive their products.
Khoi VinhI think the thing about the Internet is that it has so many characteristics that can be easily construed to be similar or almost identical to print that it can be misleading.
Khoi VinhI think there's a huge - there's a huge desire in me to make sense of the world in a way that I think you can trace back to that early disruption, this idea of wanting to compensate for that really kind of traumatic experience and sort of seeing its impact on my immediate and extended family.
Khoi VinhBefore Gutenberg, there was this really very strong oral storytelling culture where being able to relay stories from person to person was sufficient. And then, with the introduction of printing and mass communication, suddenly somebody had a lot of authority invested in the idea of a single canonical expression of a document or a piece of communication.
Khoi VinhI think we are in this era right now where every element in a webpage is rendered to within an inch of its life. I think if it's a button, it looks like a physical button, you know, if it's a mailbox that's meant to signal a messaging functionality then the whole mailbox right down to the rivets on the hypothetical metallic housing is rendered.
Khoi VinhI think the way design was practiced for most of the 20th century was very declarative. A designer came up with a solution for a project and put it in place and shipped the solution and it landed in a reader or a customer's hands as a brochure. They would see it as a poster, or as a piece of signage. And that was sort of it. That was the end of it. I think Internet technology has really upended that whole equation because in some ways a designer's work is never really done online.
Khoi Vinh