In my attempt to assemble a coalition on behalf of the Asian Liver Center at Stanford University against the hepatitis B — and consequential liver cancer — disparity that the Vietnamese population faces, I was presented with the fact that the design director of nytimes.com is none-other than a Vietnamese brother, Khoi Vinh.
I’ve always rhetorically begged the question: does Vietnamese=poor design? Is it unavoidable and messy because of all the diacritics? Cases in point:
- Viet Tribune: one of the big Vietnamese media giants of California.
- Miss Vietnam USA: site for the Vietnamese beauty pageant … which now doesn’t even work. Touché.
- Lowes: a corporate site marketed towards Vietnamese
In wanting to effectively communicate with the Vietnamese community at large, I need to know these things. And if this is how it’s done — if this is what they respond to, then I guess it makes my job easier.
Khoi / subtraction.com’s contents are producted under Creative Commons licensing … which I think coincidentally tied in with my current wonderings about open source.
What is open source … something to explore in another posting.