Vietnamese Typography Should be Renamed to Vietnamese Type Design

AI wrote:

Greetings,

I like the fact that your website exists. However, your website seems more geared to font designers designing fonts. I like that you are helping western font designers design Vietnamese fonts. So that we have more well designed Vietnamese fonts. However, if you want to add more to the website. I would want you to add more typography guides specifically for Vietnamese. Like punctuation, text formatting, page layout and type composition. Your website reminds me of the similarly named Matthew Butterick’s Practical typography, and Typography for lawyers. If you can extend your website to more topics other than type design. It would be gladly appreciated. Thank you.

Regards.

I replied:

Hi A,

Thank you for writing to me. I also appreciate your feedback. You are correct that my web book is for type designers, and it was intentional. The first version of this book, which was my thesis for my MA in graphic design, my goal was to enhance and enrich Vietnamese typography. I am a typographer and not a type designer. I can only set type. I don’t design type. When the book launched, however, many type designers had reached out to me and asked for my advice on Vietnamese diacritics.

For the second version of the book, I revised and expanded the book to include more information and illustration to help type designers support Vietnamese. It’s a win win. The type designers have to design Vietnamese diacritics in order for me to use their fonts. Without type, I can’t be a typographer.

I like the idea of adding typography guides specifically for Vietnamese. This is what I have been doing with the samples. Designing sample pages had become one of my favorite creative exercises. I choose the type of subjects I wanted to create, the design directions without needing approvals, and the typefaces I wanted to showcase.

Yes, Vietnamese Typography and Professional Web Typography were inspired by Matthew Butterick’s Practical Typography. I loved that book so much that I followed his lead. I wanted the information to be free for all and anyone who can support would be great.

Donny