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Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)

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Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)

#51

Post by jamesteow »

donohoe wrote: post #38

When Andy's link was first posted here it struck a nerve with many people, especially myself ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2806257 ). The big problem that myself and many others have with Andy is that he is a professional. He is known in web standards and design circles. He builds web sites. The big point here: He has been on the other side of the design process (I presume) explaining to people why things wer…

Working on a startup is nothing like working client side at a place like the NYT. With the former, one can be agile and code up some easy edits in a few days, and push it out without weeks of deliberation. It's easy to pick out the navigation and say, "look, let's cut some of this out or hide it in secondary navigation." Good luck with that with corporations as big as the NYT. Chances are, each link is represented by a group that will be LIVID if you dare remove them from the exposed navigation.

Removing big ads from the homepage is nice for a pitch (actually to be honest, it is a very common strategy to emotionally lure people into a pretty but imperfect design to rework later) but would never get approved internally. You'd have to have a pretty convincing argument that losing a huge source of revenue would be counterbalanced by a large increase in viewership, and I don't think that's an argument he could win (in this specific instance).

Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)

#52

Post by davedx »

tonydev wrote: post #8
pbreit wrote: post #4

The redesigner did make some breathtaking pronouncements: "The New York Times presents a rather typical example of terribly-designed news" "popularity has nothing to do with news" "today's paper: irrelevant" "the Times’ search results page is an excellent example of usable news design"

I try to keep up with Khoi Vihn and Subtraction because I believe he always provides a balanced insight into respectable/high-design principals and the practicality of applying them to mammoth operations like the NYT and such. In fact, his tone of decency and respect, despite the the off-the-cuff pronouncements made by Andy Rutledge is exactly the voice I've come to expect from Khoi. Which is awesome. Also, this remi…

"The ivory tower of photoshop". Great quote!

Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)

#53

Post by gorog »

donohoe wrote: post #38

When Andy's link was first posted here it struck a nerve with many people, especially myself ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2806257 ). The big problem that myself and many others have with Andy is that he is a professional. He is known in web standards and design circles. He builds web sites. The big point here: He has been on the other side of the design process (I presume) explaining to people why things wer…

I don't think the critics of the NYT where out of touch with reality. The big 3 French newspaper (lemonde.fr, lefigaro.fr, liberation.fr) are all much easier to scan than the likes of the NYT.

Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)

#54

Post by pbhjpbhj »

eric-hu wrote: post #44
palish wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say that? It seems fairly certain that if NYTimes one day looked like a blog, then their revenue would dry up. It would scare away a lot of people, such as my dad, who don't like change and who don't care about whether a website has rounded corners.

On the other hand, Facebook has forced some fairly annoying changes with their chat interface, news feed and friend/group management. Maybe people won't be scared away that easily (put off is another story).

>Facebook has forced some fairly annoying changes with their chat interface

They didn't force that change, you can just turn it off.

Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)

#55

Post by ChrisBanner »

Vinh's response is really true of any collaborative creative environment, from the arts to engineering. To evaluate or re-design outside of the context of the original project (it's requirements, business goals, stakeholders, etc.) can only yield an irrelevant conclusion.

Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)

#56

Post by esrauch »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #54
eric-hu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, Facebook has forced some fairly annoying changes with their chat interface, news feed and friend/group management. Maybe people won't be scared away that easily (put off is another story).

> Facebook has forced some fairly annoying changes with their chat interface They didn't force that change, you can just turn it off.

How can you turn it off?

Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)

#57

Post by kstrauser »

I'm not a designer and come into this not knowing who Khoi Vinh is. However, his site's footer - Visual design, layout and Cascading Style Sheets may not be reused without permission. - just reeks of self-importance. I'm really not allowed to make a high-contrast fixed-width three-column layout with header and footer without Vinh's authorization?

I realize this might be like coming to a software discussion and not knowing who Steve Jobs is. For all I know, maybe Vinh invented and patented three-column layouts and everyone's laughing at my ignorance.

Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)

#58

Post by blueskittle »

Having worked for a major metro newspaper's website, I'm fully aware of the challenges faced by Khoi and others. The homepage is the Mt. Everest of challenges within these organizations.There are so many considerations and limitations, which are compounded by the fact that so many people within the organization have a vested interest in the homepage design. It's impossible for people such as Khoi to push a design through without compromising at every step along the way. The end result is unrecognizable from where you started (or had originally envisioned). Such is life at a large news organization. We are powerless. And so we dream.

Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)

#59

Post by scott_s »

nikcub wrote: post #23

What I find ironic is that when Pump was posted, the alternate to WSGI - everybody jumped on the author and trashed everything about it. Meanwhile some designer suggests that the New York Times trash their entire business and turn it into an ugly looking blog (with padding!) and it gets 500 upvotes. At least the Pump/WSGI proposal was genuine interest and enthusiasm and not condescending. This is a total repeat of th…

It was upvoted many times, but the resulting discussion was, I think, mostly critical of the redesign.

Re: Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)

#60

Post by rexf »

kstrauser wrote: post #57

I'm not a designer and come into this not knowing who Khoi Vinh is. However, his site's footer - Visual design, layout and Cascading Style Sheets may not be reused without permission. - just reeks of self-importance. I'm really not allowed to make a high-contrast fixed-width three-column layout with header and footer without Vinh's authorization? I realize this might be like coming to a software discussion and not kn…

He was the Design Director for NYTimes from 2006 - 2010. The re-design he refers to is a critique of the NYTimes website. [1]

Regarding the footer disclaimer, it's probably because his newspaper-like blog/site design is also sold as a Word Press theme. [2]

I wouldn't call him the Steve Jobs of his industry, but he has been a big proponent for (what I consider clean design with) grids. [3]

[1] http://www.subtraction.com/about

[2] http://basicmaths.subtraction.com/

[3] http://www.subtraction.com/2004/12/31/grid-computi

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