Letting Go of the Design

That could have been the title of Khoi Vinh’s presentation for Web Design 2010.  In telling the story of how he, as the design director of NYTimes.com, came to embrace grids, he elegantly summarized the struggle between design and content on the web.

Vinh walked through the tranformation of New York Times Style Magazine from a stylized Flash site to a clean, blog-inspired site. Along the way, he noted what was lost—and gained.

Lost: Art Direction

Those evocative, carefully art directed print spreads couldn’t be the same. Releasing the tight grip that art direction affords is hard, but it leads to many benefits.

Gained: Efficiency, Flexibility—and New Opportunity

Reproducing a gorgeous print publication in Flash was expensive and slow. The blog-inspired T magazine is much faster and easier to produce. The content is more nimble (as Rachel Lovinger might say) and therefore easier to find through search, feeds, social networking, and more. And, through it all, Vinh found new design opportunity in grids. Sometimes, constraints lead to more, not less, creativity.

Vinh’s upcoming book, Ordering Disorder, will focus more on using and implementing grids, but more people need to hear about his journey to embracing them—and the content that fills them. It’s a journey sure to inspire anyone who cares about strategy for interactive design and content.

The New York Times embraced a flexible, efficient format for its style magazine.