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.
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This exact style (for all I know, this actual guy) has been around since at least the 70s, so are clearly hand painted. I recall seeing an original once, and they are around 36″ wide, which was actually shockingly small to me. The one I saw was also mixed media, with pen, ink washes and paint all used together.
I always agreed they were very, very nicely done and painted to give an oddly emotive look to what is a piece of machinery, really.
Steven: I wouldn’t be so sure that they’re hand-painted. Take a look at close-ups of the work like this one, especially at the gradients, and you might see why I think they’re computer generated.
Oh, sure. These are current. I meant that he’s building on a tradition of this exact same illustrative style. He might even be old enough to have done it the old way.
Cannot find any online, so I scanned one in a book I have laying around. Sadly, the big ones are across the fold, and repro is not terrific when blown up like this:
Link
This was published in 1981, so presumably is not computer-rendered.
Some other views from this same book (other than straight elevations) are even prettier
Link
Ahh yes I see what you mean. You’re totally right; these works are in that same tradition.