I just gave my professional site a typographic update for 2026.

For a while, I had been wanting to use the NaN Holo family, designed by Luke Prowse, Jean-Baptiste Morizot, and Fátima Lázaro, but I couldn’t find the right fit. I particularly love NaN Holo Mono, but it is a challenge to set as body text. As I was making some minor updates on my own site, donnytruong.com, I decided to just go for it.

Monospaced typefaces were designed for coding, but I wanted to try them for body copy and my site was the perfect place to experiment. After messing around with NaN Holo Mono, I started to like the way it reads as paragraph text.

For large headings, however, the black mono weight took up way too much space; therefore, I went with the compressed black weight and it swells.

The NaN Holo family doesn’t come with italics. I use small caps for emphasis instead. In addition, I had always wanted to style my links with underlined small caps so I went ahead and implemented it.

On the homepage, I removed my photo. It is definitely personable to have a photo on a professional site, but I don’t have any good ones of myself.

I hope you enjoy the new change. Check out donnytruong.com.

I am a skiaholic. Damn right, I just coined a new word and I am not ashamed to admit that I am a skiaholic. This season, I already spent 27 days skiing, snowboarding, and teaching. I think about that white powder all the time. I don’t want to hit it. I just want to shred it.

As a skiaholic, I always try to get my fix. Waiting for the weekends to come is getting way too long. I need to get on the slopes more often. Liberty resort is closest to my house and its hours of operation are the longest. On Monday to Wednesday, Liberty opens until 8:00 pm. On Thursday, it opens until 9:00 pm. I have been tempted to hit the slopes after work even just for a few hours, but I also have responsibilities and obligations at home.

I didn’t mind skiing or snowboarding alone, but I would feel guilty without my family. Unfortunately, my wife isn’t into skiing. Fortunately, three out of my four boys still enjoy skiing and snowboarding. Spending time with them on the slopes had been my most-treasured moments.

Being a skiaholic is a good thing. It is definitely better than being an alcoholic. In fact, I have been giving up drinking to prevent getting gout. If I got a flare up, I would be out of commission for two to three weeks. I couldn’t take that risk.

Being a skiaholic is good for my physical health. I am out in the cold moving for hours. My body is getting used to the cold. I don’t get sick. I feel stronger. Being a skiaholic is also great for my mental health. Because I am so focused on skiing and snowboarding, I don’t pay attention to all the negativities around me.

Before ski season began, I was miserable. I was carrying loads of personal issues. I couldn’t control my own emotions. My wife sat me down and told me that I needed therapy. I agreed. I was a mess and I would seek out a therapist. On second thought, why would I pay a stranger to hear me vent about my personal issues? I could do that on my blog for free. I also knew that once ski season started, I would be just fine.

Taking on the seasonal job as a Ski & Ride instructor allows me to be more social. I talk to many guests. I interact with a group of passionate ski and snowboard instructors. Even when I was not working, I was skiing, snowboarding, and talking to strangers on the chairlift. All I had to ask was, “How is your day?” Then we would kick off a 5-minute conversation or not. Some people don’t like to talk and I respect that.

Being a skiaholic definitely improves my quality of life. And the best part of being a skiaholic is almost free. There’s nothing to whine or complain about being a skiaholic. I am going to say it proud and loud: “I am a fucking skiaholic.”

Nguyễn Ngọc Tư is a littérateur of short stories who has a distinctive style of capturing the language of Southern Vietnamese, particularly in the Mekong Delta. Her stories are often heavy on social issues and injustices. After reading her collection of short stories in Đong tấm lòng, I decided to pull a few of my personal favorites to create a Vietnamese typographic sample. The main text is set in Hahmlet, designed by Minjoo Ham and Mark Frömberg. For the title cover, I chose Smooch, designed by Robert Leuschke. Special thanks to Nhựt Trường for requesting me to create a sample page for Nguyễn Ngọc Tư and for recommending me to read Đong tấm lòng. Check out “Giữa người với người”.

After stepping aside for 5 weeks, I was back in my warm and cozy office at Scalia Law School as Director of Design & Web Services. I needed some catching up to do, but my colleagues had done an exceptional job of holding down the fort while I was away on snowy mountains skiing, snowboarding, or teaching. While my office job works my brain, my outdoor job works my body.

I spent my evenings driving my kids to their activities or tuning up skis and snowboards for customers. Then I spent some late nights working on freelance web design and development. If I had no client work, I would work on my self-initiated projects. I worked with my wife on HaH! Chili. She made our product. I made all of our marketing materials from our website to the bottle label to social media promotions.

I advised type designers on Vietnamese diacritics. When I didn’t have any gigs, I churned out Vietnamese typographic samples. I keep myself busy. I consider myself a hustler, but my wife thinks I have ADHD. I brushed her off at first, but I had been thinking about what she said. She might be right. I couldn’t shut down my brain to sleep until I exhausted my body and mind.

I haven’t been able to stay still. My state of mind has always been in constant elevation. In retrospect, it all started with my professional career working in the web industry. Being a web designer and developer, I have to constantly come up with new designs and keep up with the latest technologies. Then it spread over to my personal developments. I read to improve my knowledge. I blog to improve my writing. I ski, snowboard, and skate to improve my physical and mental health. I always feel the need to improve myself with whatever I am involved in. I don’t need to make tremendous improvements overnight. I practice my techniques and hone my skills one day at a time. As long as I am better today than yesterday, I am improving. I play the long-term game.

Maybe I am overdoing it, but I don’t think that’s ADHD. I think of it as a self investment.

I am excited to announce the launch of a landing page for my passionate work as a ski & ride instructor at Whitetail Resort, which is part of Vail Resorts.

I want to share a bit about my journey to skiing and snowboarding. I also want to share my coaching progressions for both sports so guests will know what they will learn from me.

For the design, I had to go with the jacket blue. For all Vail instructors, blue is the color of our uniforms. For typesetting, I had to go with Roslindale, designed by David Jonathan Ross.

Check out my new site, book a lesson, and come ski or ride with me.

Right off the first line on the opening track, “On With the Show,” Celeste sings, “And so… Got a feeling I should go.” Her gruff voice and articulate phrasing sound just like Billie Holiday. The piano plays behind her throughout with an occasional bass and subtle strings following her. She turns up an octave on the bridge: “There’s the swell of strings, the choir in constant rage / It’s the pit that sets the time, but we never see them play.” Damn!

On “Keep Smiling,” a strumming guitar accompanies her while the lust orchestra backs her up. Again she channels Lady Day in phrasing fascinating lyrics: “Curved at the edges, first in a frown / Held like the truth is there in my mouth.”

On the title track, “Woman of Faces,” the piano accompanies her as she sings, “She is a woman of all faces / Works so hard just to be replaced with / Who really cares what she’s made of?” The tune progresses into swelling and hypnotizing orchestration.

Most of the recordings on this album has an orchestra element except for “Could Be Machine,” which has a wild drum machine. The chorus has a child-like melody in which her voice fights against the marching drums, “Could be laughing right now, could be laughing right now / Could we be machine? Could we be machine?”

I had been listening to Woman of Faces every time I hit the road early in the morning when the sun was still down, but it could have been fantastic to enjoy at night with a glass of whiskey. I tried not to drink much these days so I could focus on skiing and snowboarding. If my gout flares up, I am done.

Thank you for your requests and pre-orders on our HaH! Chili Sauce. While waiting for our HaH! Chilimaster to make a new batch, we invite you to check out our HaH! updated website. We added a photo gallery to the site. We also created a fun YouTube playlist of Donny Trương (that’s me) enjoying his food with HaH! Chili Sauce.

Timber & Lụa, by Vi Khi Nào and Lily Hoàng, is billed as experimental narratives. Each short story is written in three versions: Vietlish, English, and Vietnamese. I read several pages of the Vietlish version and gave up before my head was about to explode. Here’s a sample excerpt:

Love, mặc dù phổ quát, is not a ngôn ngữ she is designed to speak and its performance always feels a bit lập dị and nổi bật. She wants to understand it like the way ruy băng understands its lăng kính or tù giam. She was built to be a rô bô sắc sảo, từng hàng of code is perfect. Vì vậy, what is không đúng about her now? She nhìn lên nhìn xuống with her rotating eyeballs and asks Chalk, “Is fucking like a một bữa tiệc xa hoa. Or, ngoại trừ me, is it a bathroom door everyone knows how to open?”

What the fuck did I just read? The English version flows a bit better, but the Vietnamese version reads like Google Translate. I experimented with alternating between English and Vietnamese as I turned a page and that confused me even more. Even as someone who reads and writes both English and Vietnamese, I was having a hard time grasping the narratives.

Timber & Lụa is a bold, daring experimentation, but that’s about it.

Last Saturday, my fellow snowboard instructor and I coached 2 brothers. He took the 6-year-old and I took the 8-year-old. Since they signed up for a group lesson, they both could have taken the lesson with either one of us, but we split up because they might be on different levels.

The cost for each kid was $405. Their dad also gave each of us tips at the end of the lesson. He was willing to spend around $850 for us to teach his kids even though he snowboarded himself. I didn’t know if he was wealthy or not, but that was some serious investments.

On the kids’ part, I didn’t know how the 6-year-old did, but the 8-year-old gave all he could. He fell, got up, and rode again. I took him on the chair lift, showed him how to turn. He nailed his heelside, but still had trouble with his toeside. We got back on the lift and worked on it again and again.

We took a 20-minute break half way through the lesson. We gave him chips and water. After he finished them both, he got up, threw his trash in the trash can, went to the bathroom, washed his hands, and wanted to get back on the chair lift again to work on his toeside.

He definitely made good use of his time and the money his parents spent on him. For 2 hours and 40 minutes, he did not complain at all.

Yesterday I went to Liberty for the first time this season. In the morning, I taught a friend how to ski for the first time ever. After lunch, I let him work on his turns at the learning center. I went to the back side to shred on the blue and double black terrains.

I sat on the chair lift with two ski instructors at Liberty. They were nerding out about carving then asked me about my day. I asked them about their day and if they taught a class. One of them said, “We have wonderful snow on the terrains, but no one to teach.” I joked with them, “Why don’t you guys teach me?” They asked me what I was working on. I told them, “Carving.” They started giving carving tips.

As we rode off the lift, they asked me to come along. They introduced themselves as Leo and Dave. They coached me on Dipsy Doodle. I was having a private lesson with two instructors. When we skied to the flat area, Leo gave me a “wrap-up” talk as instructors should do. I thanked them and unzipped my jacket to reveal my inner jacket. They recognized the blue uniform instantly. I confessed to them, “Yes, I am an instructor at Whitetail.” We all laughed. I went on, “I was testing you guys. Not only did you give a great lesson, but you were also willing to coach a random guest. That was very generous of you.” Leo said, “You’re the undercover boss” while Dave pulled out his phone to take a selfie of us.

Dave said, “You should join our team.” I told him that I actually applied at Liberty first, but I was rejected. I applied to Whitetail and they hired me immediately. They took me to the Ski and Ride School to introduce me to the director, but he was not there. Dave gave me his card and told me to contact him so he can put me in touch with the director to see if he could transfer me over.

I was not looking to make the transfer. Liberty is about 15 minutes closer to my house, but I am loving Whitetail, especially the Ski and Ride School. I am glad to be part of it and the extra 15-minute commute is definitely worth it.