Bookbinding Vietnamese Typography

BB writes:

Hey Donny!

I am a senior Industrial Design student at BYU, I work as a UX/UI designer, and I also happen to enjoy bookbinding. I speak Vietnamese and have a strong interest in Vietnamese literature and design, and Vietnamese Typography Vol. 2 has been a wonderful resource. I love the examples, and am especially fond of the idiomatic expressions compilation.

I am reaching out to you because I am interested in making Vietnamese Typography into a physical book. I would absolutely love to be able to make your wonderful digital resource into a physical artifact to add to my personal collection. To this end, I am contacting you with a proposition I hope you might be able to help me with. I would like your help in formatting Vietnamese Typography for print—page cutoffs, chapter headers, cover design, etc.—and in return I will design and make the binding and construct the book by hand. If you’re interested in this proposition, I will make two copies of the physical book: one for you, and one for myself. I am eager to collaborate with you on this project, and I hope to hear back from you soon.

Thank you,

BB

I replied:

Hi B,

Thank you for your interest in turning my web book into a physical book. As long as you make it for yourself and not selling it, I am fine with that. The major issue you would run into is licensing. The majority of the typefaces I use on Vietnamesetypography.com were contributed by type designers. Most of them only provided web font files. I don’t have the desktop files and the licenses.

I have over 28 type families on the site. None of them are open source; therefore, it would be pretty expensive to license all the type families for desktop. This was the reason I decided to drop the print copy for the second edition of the book.

Furthermore, I am continuing to add more typeface recommendations and create more samples; therefore, the print version will be behind whenever I make updates.

I am not sure what you have in mind, but it is not as simple as turning a web book into a physical book.

Regards,

Donny Trương