The Vostok blog

Khoi is former Design Director of NYTimes.com, he has a blog called Subtraction and an elegant WordPress theme called Basic Maths. He’s also one of the most outspoken critics of how the news industry is dealing with changing consumption habits and vanishing revenue streams. He’s poignant but respectful, an insider who never quite stopped being an outsider. A designer we respect for upping the ante.

It’s quite discouraging to see so many failed attempts at adapting a product as important to society as newspapers that we felt we needed to ask the guy to go to for this subject to share his thoughts on what has changed, what newspapers are doing to adapt and why their changes are so timid. We encourage you to watch the full-length interview in case you want more information or, like me, are just curious about the man. If not, here’s a good 4min compilation of snippets of the most important things we touched on.

On a side note… One of Vostok‘s dream jobs would be, without a doubt, to design an online newspaper. It would also be one of our worst job nightmares…You have to deal with infinite layers and inevitable complex structures, not to mention the frustration of having to play by the rules when you know the rules are no longer valid. It’s not an easy task. You can read a compilation of what our stance is when it comes to online news design here.

Agree? Not agree? Let us know what you think.