Khoi Vinh's Blog, page 78

How They Got There—Now on Sale

I’m finally finished with my new book “How They Got There: Interviews With Digital Designers About Their Careers” and it’s on sale right today! You can get your copy right now at howtheygotthere.us. As I wrote when I announced it, the book features fourteen interviews that I conducted with digital designers of prominence—many of the…

Getty Images and Unfinished Business

This is a pretty clever publicity stunt for Twentieth Century Fox’s upcoming film “Unfinished Business,” a comedy about a business trip starring Vince Vaughn, Tom Wilkinson and Dave Franco. The studio partnered with Getty Images’ iStock to create a series of free, downloadable images in the grand tradition of cheesy, painfully bad stock photography. Frankly,…

Danger 5

Thanks to my Australian friends for inventing “Danger 5,” the absurdist action comedy TV series that, in its first season, blended together 60s spy movie conceits, historically inaccurate Nazi villains and generous doses of “Thunderbirds” into a bizarre and generally inappropriate pop pastiche. That first season is now available in the U.S. on Netflix—I know…

A Message from Mister Rogers to His Viewers Who Have Grown Up

This brief, heartbreaking video was just released yesterday. Its privacy settings apparently don’t allow it to be embedded, unfortunately. PBS writes: A few months before his death in 2003, Fred Rogers recorded this video message for those who grew up watching ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.’ This message was one of the last things he recorded in…

Graphic Designers in Film and Television

“Hello, can I redesign your logo? Yes that will be £100,000 for a squiggle.” + Share Facebook Twitter Google+

The Virtues of Old-fashioned Play

Maybe it’s just because I’m a father of young children, but when I read this story earlier this week I couldn’t get it out of my mind. It’s not new; it actually keys off of a book written in 2008 by Howard Chudacoff called “Children at Play: An American History .” Chudacoff, a cultural historian…

“How They Got There” Is Getting There

Folks, I’m nearing the finish line in preparing my book “How They Got There: Interviews With Digital Designers About Their Careers” for sale. Last week I applied the final round of changes from my eagle-eyed editor, Sue Apfelbaum, put the finishing touches on a marketing page for the book (which will replace the teaser page…

Birdman: The Action Figure

To be clear, though I argued on Monday that it did not deserve the best picture Oscar, I still enjoyed Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s “Birdman.” I also enjoyed this promotional video from its studio, Fox Searchlight: a satirical commercial for an action figure version of the Birdman character, produced in the style of such commercials from…

Wildcard SDK for iOS

Last fall my colleagues at Wildcard and I released Wildcard for iPhone, the first browser that lets you experience a different kind of mobile web, one that uses the card metaphor—fast, native, interactively rich—instead of the page metaphor. We’re continuing to evolve Wildcard for iPhone and have some really exciting things in development, but we…

Boyhood and The Oscars

In a thoughtful essay at The Dissolve about last night’s Oscar ceremony, writer Jen Chaney reflects on the the best picture trophy going to “Birdman” instead of “Boyhood”: Yes, as some predicted (not me), Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s one-shot take on artistic integrity and raging narcissism was named the best picture of 2014 over Richard Linklater’s…