Hasta La Ideas

Even if he didn’t hold such an enviable title — Design Director of the New York Times website — Khoi Vinh has the sort of background and experience that makes him a natural choice for the upcoming Creative Confab panel discussion. He’s been implementing impeccable web design for over a decade. His personal site, Subtraction.com, is among the web’s most thoughtful and widely-read blogs on user experience and sensitive website design. Before moving to NYTimes.com, he co-founded the groundbreaking studio Behavior LLC, and is heavily credited with bringing grid systems to website design in a useful, meaningful way.

More significantly for this Friday’s panel discussion, he’s done a lot of hiring over the years, including the majority of the current 12-person design department he currently runs at the Times, and has some very clear ideas about what constitutes a good hire, and how to find them. We managed to get answers to a couple of questions on this topic from him earlier today — for the rest, come catch the panel at the Art Directors Club this Friday.

1. There’s an impression that the best designers still have plenty of work, even in an economic downturn. Is this more a matter of employers’ reluctance to risk hiring younger, unknown designers, or just an indication of the rarity of exceptional talent?

I can’t speak for other employers, but I’ve recently hired at least a few young people right out of school. So I really believe the impression you describe is an indication of talent scarcity. It seems that regardless of whether times are good or bad, there just aren’t enough people out there with the right mix of skills, smarts and good attitudes.

2. Given how well-known the Times brand is, how do you distinguish applicants who are passionate about it from those who are simply excited to work somewhere with a lot of cachet?

It actually doesn’t take much digging to find out if a candidate truly knows our product. Just a few questions about some of our columnists, our sections, the way we cover the news, the way we organize our content, etc., and we can usually get a sense of whether the person is a reader/user or not. I should say too that we don’t necessarily require a comprehensive knowledge of every corner of NYTimes.com or the newspaper; even someone with only a moderate level of enthusiasm doesn’t necessarily get disqualified. What we’re looking for is honesty about their level of passion, and some evidence that they can think deeply and intuitively about the challenges at hand.

Vinh, along with three other top-of-their-field designers and recruiters, will be delving into the tricks and trials of creative hiring from both the job-seeker’s and talent-seeker’s perspective during the Confab event. It also offers the chance to meet and trade notes with some of the best design firms and creative professionals in the Tri-State area. See the Confab page over on Coroflot for more details, and registration information.

Coroflot’s Creative Employment Confab
May 15th, 2-5 pm
Art Directors Club
106 W 29th St. @ 6th Avenue, New York City

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The LED-enahnced workstation above is one of the entries in the Emotionalize Your Light competition. The desk is a working prototype, with a loop of LED’s around the top, and also suspended from the ceiling. The colors can be adjusted to various hues using switches. Andres4, the creator of the desk, is working on a computer controller for the colors. The disk in the middle of the upper panel is “a must for every Star Trek fan” according to the designer, whatever that means!

The competition offers 7000 euros in prizes, with an entry deadline of June 25. Enter your own idea, or vote on the others.

(full disclosure – we have an ad campaign running for this competition)

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The creative employment field is a constantly shifting one, and the upcoming Coroflot Creative Confab in New York this Friday is no exception. After some re-shuffling, the one hour panel discussion that forms the heart of the event will now include two previously introduced speakers — design recruiter extraordinaire Judy Wert, and Big Spaceship CEO Michael Lebowitz — and two new additions about which we’re just giddy:

Tom Nicholson, CEO of leading digital design agency IconNicholson, and

Khoi Vinh, Design Director of NYTimes.com, and author of pivotal design blog Subtraction.com

We’ll have more background on each of these veterans as the week progresses, or just take a look at their respective sites for a window into some industry-defining thought on the process and business of digital creation. To hear all four of them discuss the current state of the professions, and meet like-minded creative professionals, get your registration on at the Confab event page on Coroflot here.

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The fifth Mobile User Experience Conference will run from 19-20 May in London this year, and refreshingly, it will focus on building a collaborative response to an eight-point MEX Manifesto. Here’s a taste of #2:

Achieving a great tactile experience is a subtle art…the tactile nuances of mobile products are of much greater importance to customers than the industry realizes. Adding a touch screen does not automatically equate to a better user experience.

Well, unless it’s a really BIG one. (just kidding)

Get all the registration info, schedule and speakers at the site.

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After premiering at SXSW and showing in limited engagements around the country/world over the past 6 weeks, Gary Hustwit’s Objectified opens at the IFC Center in NY City today. The film will show for a few weeks, but special Q&A with the director, along with Dan Formosa from Smart Design and Rob Walker will take place this weekend. Treat yourself to this tribute to the designed world and to those who do their part to produce intelligent and beautiful objects.

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