‘How They Got There’ by Khoi Vinh

Khoi Vinh (who you may know from the great Subtraction.com blog) has a new ebook out called How They Got There: Interviews With Digital Designers About Their Careers. The title pretty much says it all, but I don’t want to understate anything here — Khoi assembled a truly awesome group of designers to interview about their lives and career choices:

  • Dan Cederholm of Dribbble
  • Alex Cornell of Firespotter Labs
  • Nicholas Felton of Daytum
  • Agnieszka Gasparska of Kiss Me I’m Polish
  • Cemre Güngör of Branch
  • Erika Hall of Mule
  • Naz Hamid of Weightshift
  • Karen McGrane of Bond Art + Science
  • Wilson Miner of The Factory
  • Jill Nussbaum of The Barbarian Group
  • Evan Sharp of Pinterest
  • Geoff Teehan of Teehan + Lax
  • Justin Van Slembrouck of Digg
  • Marcos Weskamp of Flipboard
  • with a foreword by Liz Danzico of NPR and chair of MFA Interaction Design at The School of Visual Arts

I would especially recommend this book to anyone just getting started with a career in design work, but anyone who wants to know what makes great designers tick should also check it out. Khoi himself put it best:

Basically, this is the book that I wish that I could have had handy when I was just starting out, when I was trying to figure out how to get from A to B career-wise. […] the conversations were so interesting that I felt newly inspired myself.

The full price of the book is $30, but for a limited time (as of March 16th, 2015) there is an option on the site to tweet about the book and get a $5 discount. Either way, when you buy the book you’ll receive a 250-page PDF, as well as unabridged copies for iBooks (ePub) and Kindle (MOBI).