Designers that helped create Medium are joining Facebook

Facebook is bringing on some of the key interface designers behind Medium, the strikingly minimalist blogging platform. The designers come from the firm Teehan+Lax, which is responsible for much of Medium's interface, layout, and branding. That's a big score for Facebook given how well Medium's design has worked — it's made the platform easy to use and easy to recognize, even across branded pages. That isn't all to the credit of Teehan+Lax, but the firm certainly played a significant role, as it describes in some detail here. The firm also worked on Readability.

Facebook has had a mixed history as far as design goes. While it's made a lot of gorgeous and impressive products, those have generally become bogged down bit by bit with new features, ads, and additional information. In other instances, Facebook has had to trash nice design simply because it resulted in less engagement. So the network very much has to figure out how to find a balance, and that's an area Teehan+Lax's designers may well be able to help. There's no word about what specifically they'll be working on, however.

Teehan+Lax also doesn't say how many of its designers will be heading over to Facebook. Even though it's a small company, TechCrunch reports that many of its employees won't be coming along. That's because Facebook isn't actually buying Teehan+Lax, it's just hiring some of its biggest names, who will then shut down their old firm. Even so, Facebook is still bringing on a number of experienced designers that have credits in some big products that you've probably used, and that's always a good thing for the site's future.

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