Interview
Khoi Vinh
What are some things you do to help yourself into the state of mind necessary for creative work?
I sketch a lot. I also turn off the television and turn on music. To concentrate, I swear by the Seefeel album "Quique," which is very meditative. Really, though, I spend so much of my time during the day in meetings and doing non-design activities, that when it comes time to actually sit down and design, I'm sufficiently eager enough to do it that it doesn't take much self-cajoling to get into the mood.
Do you follow a strict daily (or weekly, etc.) routine with regard to workflow, or is every day (or week) different?
It's not easy to answer this, because my days are jam packed, from 6:00a until I hit the sack, usually around midnight. So my schedule is different from day to day, I would say, but I'm strict in the sense that when there's free time, I'm usually pretty good about capitalizing upon it for work. I would say that, when faced with a free hour in the evenings, about 80% of the time I manage to use it productively.
Do you prefer to work in a closed, private environment free from other people and distractions, or in a more open, collaborative environment?
Open. I like working alongside other designers, sharing ideas, talking about design and anything else. The more inputs -- whether focused or random -- the better. Of course, it's sometimes handy to have a pair of good headphones on hand, in order to tune people out.
What do you do to get your day(s) started in the right direction?
I don't open my news aggregator. RSS feeds are the quickest way to torpedo a day's productivity.
What task management technique do you use?
I use Mori, which is basically a glorified way to bind TextEdit documents together. See this blog post:
http://www.subtraction.com/archives/2006/1012_simplerand.php
What things tend to disrupt your workflow?
Instant messages, television, people walking into my offices, meetings, etc. Nothing unusual.