Khoi Vinh's Blog, page 107

Kodak City

In this forthcoming book, award-winning Swiss photographer Catherine Leutenegger captures the decline of Rochester, New York, home to the headquarters of Eastman Kodak—once the biggest photography brand in the world, now a dwindling memory. The photographs are billed as “attentive, deadpan studies” of the ghost town-like city and the mausoleum-like Kodak buildings. They’re beautiful works…

Interview with Gary Chou of New York’s Orbital

Gary Chou’s new Orbital is part co-working space and part accelerator program—though Chou would likely frown at both characterizations. He’s trying to do something genuinely new that combines elements from both concepts but focuses squarely on independent creators—in teams of no more than three, and bootstrapped rather than venture-backed—and giving them the physical and mental…

The Future of MetaFilter

Last week MetaFilter founder Matt Haughey posted this state-of-the-union-style rumination on the site’s recent past and prospective future. He goes in-depth on life as an ad-supported, Google-dependent community, and how changes to that search engine’s undisclosed indexing practices changed the economics for Haughey and his team dramatically in late 2012: The money situation changed one…

Massimo Vignelli, Rest in Peace

The seminal graphic designer passed away today at eighty-three. +

Film Noir Posters

Coming this fall: “Film Noir 101” a lavish compendium of “the 101 best film noir posters from the 1940s-1950s.” Written by noir scholar—and graphic designer—Martin Fertig, the book compiles beautifully reproduced poster art alongside critical commentary. It’s interesting to note that while noir films of that era were almost exclusively in black and white, the…

Mad Men’s Set Design

The mid-season finale of “Mad Men” airs tonight on AMC; it’s the last episode of the show’s seventh and final season, which was annoyingly cleaved in two by the network, before resuming next year for its concluding run. I’ve still been enjoying each episode as it airs, but even setting aside the unnatural pause, I’m…

Drawings by Gustav Klimt

A wonderful cache of over one hundred drawings from Austrian painter Gustav Klimt. His confident, stylized, symbolist renderings of the human body are on full display here. Some of the drawings are more preliminary than others, but they’re almost all beautiful and some of them are quite amazing. See the full collection here. +

Is Surface Pro 3 the Artist’s Tablet?

Like me, you may have been dismissive of Microsoft’s new Surface Pro 3, which has a bigger, er, surface and is thinner than its predecessor. On specs alone, it sounds somewhat appealing, but the reality is that it sticks to Microsoft’s preferred path of hybridizing tablet and laptop features into one head-scratching form factor. Early…

Skala Color

For my money, Marc Edwards from Bjango is one of the best designers working today. His in-depth articles on technique are revealing and insightful; I’ve learned a ton from them. He’s also responsible for the incredibly useful Skala Preview, a highly polished utility that lets designers preview their designs on mobile devices in real time.…

Designing the Editorial Experience

Sue Apfelbaum and Juliette Cezzar’s new book “Designing the Editorial Experience: A Primer for Print, Web and Mobile” is an ambitious survey of the converging disciplines of publication design and digital product design. It interviews many of the designers, technologists, writers and editors crafting new, leading edge reading experiences that will set the pace for…