is a blog about design, technology and culture written by Khoi Vinh, and has been more or less continuously published since December 2000 in New York City. Khoi is currently Principal Designer at Adobe. Previously, Khoi was co-founder and CEO of Mixel (acquired in 2013), Design Director of The New York Times Online, and co-founder of the design studio Behavior, LLC. He is the author of “How They Got There: Interviews with Digital Designers About Their Careers”and “Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design,” and was named one of Fast Company’s “fifty most influential designers in America.” Khoi lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his wife and three children.
Blockwriter, my concept for a reduced-functionality word processing application that acts just like a manual typewriter, is slowly but surely inching its way to reality. Just two weeks ago, an editor from the Britian’s Guardian newspaper asked me to write about the idea for their Office Hours section, which runs on Mondays. The article ran in today’s edition of the paper with the somewhat over-promising title “Strokes of Genius.”
As is the case with many online newspapers — NYTimes.com being no exception — the digital presentation of this article isn’t as aesthetically pleasing a layout as its offline counterpart (I’ve heard a redesign of the site is on its way).
Below: Written up. My article on the Office Hours section in today’s edition of The Guardian.
Below, I’ve posted a version of the page as it appeared in the paper itself — as a lead article on the front page of the Office Hours section, with a beautiful illustration by Josefine Engstrom. For me, it’s both a small reminder of just how far news design has to go on the Web (as if I needed any reminding), and also of how gorgeous and effective was the Guardian’s recent redesign of its print edition. Unfortunately, American readers who pick up the paper’s international print edition will get a black and white version, and even then, it’s abbreviated without today’s Office Hours section.
One last thing: I’ve been working with a developer on some prototypes for an honest to goodness Blockwriter that behaves more or less in the way I outlined the concept in my original post. Stay tuned…
I believe the single biggest thing holding news design on the web back from being on-par with its print counterpart is resources. There’s no real reason why we couldn’t make something as visually rich as this Guardian page online — newspapers just generally don’t have the people and time to do it on their extremely short deadlines.
In print, every page is designed individually. Every page and every story gets at least a little bit of a designer’s attention. That’s almost never the case online. Online, we have content management systems that handle putting the content of a story into a template. Generally, that template is quite generic, because it must work for every story. Currently, it’s simply not possible for every page on the web edition of a newspaper to be designed individually.
Content management systems and templates are here to stay. They work well, and they make life easier for everyone. The key to achieving rich design online is going to be having systems that provide incredible flexibility with regard to layout and visual aesthetic, without reducing the simplicity they provide to a newspaper’s online production team.
In other words, I think us designers ought to focusing on designing publishing systems (which includes software, but also business processes, people processes, and policies) that let us do what we need to do, rather than on designing the pages themselves.
On a sort-of related note: I’m not sure we should be trying to mimic print design on the web (for example, does text in columns really work on-screen?). But, we should definitely strive to achieve the richness and beauty that print has been giving us for decades.
I’ve been extremely happy with WriteRoom already, what more functionality are you looking for? The link to your original post seems to be pointing to this entry.
I’ve found it to be an amazing application so far. It works wonderfully, has custom type options, works fluid with expose, app switching and hiding. It fades in and out gracefully. Spell checking and the cmd+cntrl+D dictionary works great. It auto saves the text so you never have to worry about saving.It’s been a dream app for writing for me so far, I couldn’t ask for anything more. Thanks for all your work on this, WriteRoom has just become another beautiful tool that I use on a daily basis.
I think it says something slightly unflattering about me that immediately upon reading this I went out and bought the Grauniad.
Andrew
I for one would love to see your idea come to fruition Khoi. Something like this would definately help me focus on writing my paper and not having to finish it in the wee hours of the morning. Keep it up!
Don Parr
Khoi, Thanks for your article, “Strokes of Genius!” Very good article I thoroughly enjoyed reading.
I’m composing this comment with “WriteRoom,” which I had the good fortune to discover about a week ago. Even in Beta (1.0), WriteRoom is Wonderful! I believe it to be a happy medium between the full featured (bloated?) writing applications of today, and “Blockwriter” you originally proposed. I would also venture to say it is a classic 21st Century example of “Less is More.”
Thanks also to Jesse Grosjean, and Hog Bay Software, for a simple, distraction free writing environment, and a very comfortable place to sit down and write.
Don Parr
Khoi, Thanks for your article, “Strokes of Genius!”
I’m composing this comment with “WriteRoom,” which I had the good fortune to discover about a week ago. Even in Beta (1.0), WriteRoom is Wonderful! I believe it to be a happy medium between the full featured (bloated?) writing applications of today, and “Blockwriter” you originally proposed. I would also venture to say it is a classic 21st Century example of “Less is More.”
Thanks also to Jesse Grosjean, and Hog Bay Software, for a simple, distraction free writing environment, and a very comfortable place to sit down and write.
@Jeff: Have you seen the text-in-columns on the International Herald Tribune’s article pages? I really like them, but I think their writing style might be the enabler: stories in the NYT, for example, would probably require too much clicking on the “forward” column.
===
The Blockwriter concepts intrigues me, but the scan of the paper article in the Guardian struck me more with its use of a yellow horizontal bar (do they use it every week for this section?).
Yellow, white and black are 2006’s answer to the red, white, and black of 2005 (Apple, Coke, etc.).
Examples: German immigration site, Sprint rebrand, Kodak tv commercials; All seem to be channeling FontShop.
Maybe I just have new car syndrome (suddenly you notice that your brand of car is everywhere when it previously seemed unremarkable) because my latest portfolio, launched last week, uses yellow/black/white. But, maybe, just maybe, this is some sort of trend.
I really love this app, it has a zen-like quality in use. The only thing that bugged me was that the first time i fired it up on my 23″ ACD I discovered 4 stuck pixels…but off course that has nothing to with WriteRoom
Excellent idea, except that the problem with blocking internet functionality, pop-up intrusions, and games is that it can be unblocked. It just puts one more roadblock in the way. Granted, this would go a long way toward increasing productivity, but for someone with a bad enough itch to check e-mail – they’re going to scratch it.
The typewriter still comes out on top.
I would point toward the Alphasmart 3000 as another alternative – hardware, and it does allow editing, but all it does is let you type – no internet, no email, no games. For some people, a worthy investment. I’ve used my Alphasmart 2000 for years now in such a way and had some success.
Prasad
Nice article. Simplify/focus helps any creative process.
when I write (used to) a Pen and a ream of paper was the preferred option, but would that be too environment unfriendly now?
Well-said.
I believe the single biggest thing holding news design on the web back from being on-par with its print counterpart is resources. There’s no real reason why we couldn’t make something as visually rich as this Guardian page online — newspapers just generally don’t have the people and time to do it on their extremely short deadlines.
In print, every page is designed individually. Every page and every story gets at least a little bit of a designer’s attention. That’s almost never the case online. Online, we have content management systems that handle putting the content of a story into a template. Generally, that template is quite generic, because it must work for every story. Currently, it’s simply not possible for every page on the web edition of a newspaper to be designed individually.
Content management systems and templates are here to stay. They work well, and they make life easier for everyone. The key to achieving rich design online is going to be having systems that provide incredible flexibility with regard to layout and visual aesthetic, without reducing the simplicity they provide to a newspaper’s online production team.
In other words, I think us designers ought to focusing on designing publishing systems (which includes software, but also business processes, people processes, and policies) that let us do what we need to do, rather than on designing the pages themselves.
On a sort-of related note: I’m not sure we should be trying to mimic print design on the web (for example, does text in columns really work on-screen?). But, we should definitely strive to achieve the richness and beauty that print has been giving us for decades.
I’ve been extremely happy with WriteRoom already, what more functionality are you looking for? The link to your original post seems to be pointing to this entry.
I’ve found it to be an amazing application so far. It works wonderfully, has custom type options, works fluid with expose, app switching and hiding. It fades in and out gracefully. Spell checking and the cmd+cntrl+D dictionary works great. It auto saves the text so you never have to worry about saving.It’s been a dream app for writing for me so far, I couldn’t ask for anything more. Thanks for all your work on this, WriteRoom has just become another beautiful tool that I use on a daily basis.
I think it says something slightly unflattering about me that immediately upon reading this I went out and bought the Grauniad.
I for one would love to see your idea come to fruition Khoi. Something like this would definately help me focus on writing my paper and not having to finish it in the wee hours of the morning. Keep it up!
Khoi, Thanks for your article, “Strokes of Genius!” Very good article I thoroughly enjoyed reading.
I’m composing this comment with “WriteRoom,” which I had the good fortune to discover about a week ago. Even in Beta (1.0), WriteRoom is Wonderful! I believe it to be a happy medium between the full featured (bloated?) writing applications of today, and “Blockwriter” you originally proposed. I would also venture to say it is a classic 21st Century example of “Less is More.”
Thanks also to Jesse Grosjean, and Hog Bay Software, for a simple, distraction free writing environment, and a very comfortable place to sit down and write.
Khoi, Thanks for your article, “Strokes of Genius!”
I’m composing this comment with “WriteRoom,” which I had the good fortune to discover about a week ago. Even in Beta (1.0), WriteRoom is Wonderful! I believe it to be a happy medium between the full featured (bloated?) writing applications of today, and “Blockwriter” you originally proposed. I would also venture to say it is a classic 21st Century example of “Less is More.”
Thanks also to Jesse Grosjean, and Hog Bay Software, for a simple, distraction free writing environment, and a very comfortable place to sit down and write.
@Jeff: Have you seen the text-in-columns on the International Herald Tribune’s article pages? I really like them, but I think their writing style might be the enabler: stories in the NYT, for example, would probably require too much clicking on the “forward” column.
===
The Blockwriter concepts intrigues me, but the scan of the paper article in the Guardian struck me more with its use of a yellow horizontal bar (do they use it every week for this section?).
Yellow, white and black are 2006’s answer to the red, white, and black of 2005 (Apple, Coke, etc.).
Examples: German immigration site, Sprint rebrand, Kodak tv commercials; All seem to be channeling FontShop.
Maybe I just have new car syndrome (suddenly you notice that your brand of car is everywhere when it previously seemed unremarkable) because my latest portfolio, launched last week, uses yellow/black/white. But, maybe, just maybe, this is some sort of trend.
I really love this app, it has a zen-like quality in use. The only thing that bugged me was that the first time i fired it up on my 23″ ACD I discovered 4 stuck pixels…but off course that has nothing to with WriteRoom
Excellent idea, except that the problem with blocking internet functionality, pop-up intrusions, and games is that it can be unblocked. It just puts one more roadblock in the way. Granted, this would go a long way toward increasing productivity, but for someone with a bad enough itch to check e-mail – they’re going to scratch it.
The typewriter still comes out on top.
I would point toward the Alphasmart 3000 as another alternative – hardware, and it does allow editing, but all it does is let you type – no internet, no email, no games. For some people, a worthy investment. I’ve used my Alphasmart 2000 for years now in such a way and had some success.
Nice article. Simplify/focus helps any creative process.
when I write (used to) a Pen and a ream of paper was the preferred option, but would that be too environment unfriendly now?
Sounds like a great idea. Just to get the feel of it, I created a little html/javascripts mockup of your blockwriter app.
http://www.mr-corner.com/type/type.html