Talking to Khôi Trần on Vietnamese Typography
Khôi Trần was wrapping up his final-year student of Bachelor of Design Studies at RMIT University Hanoi. He was working on his Capstone project, which included designing a zine about typography in Vietnam. For the content of the zine, he wished to interview a series of typographers and type designers in the Vietnamese design community. His first experience with typography in the Vietnamese setting was through my web book, which inspired his to do this project. He reached out to me for an interview.
Our Conversation
Why would foreign designers include Vietnamese in the first place if they do not have any association with the language?
To be honest, I did not think of type designers when I had the idea for Vietnamese Typography. The initial aim of the book was to highlight the problem of Vietnamese language support in typefaces. However, when the book was published, I learnt that many designers were interested in the Vietnamese diacritics to make their typefaces more accessible. In comparison to some other Asian languages, which use their own shapes to form their own writing, Vietnamese uses the Latin alphabet. This makes it so that designers wanting to design Vietnamese characters do not have to speak the language; they only have to know about the way the diacritics work. The book, thus, has given them the knowledge and confidence to take on the unique challenge of Vietnamese characters.
The thesis was originally published in 2015. Since then, the situation with Vietnamese typography has improved exponentially. Do you feel the book had a big role in this so-called ‘movement’?
It was very interesting as I was receiving enquiries about Vietnamese characters from experienced, foreign designers, I was also finding out about young Vietnamese designers looking at this as an opportunity to design their own typefaces. Since then, I have seen many Vietnamese-supported typefaces pop up, both in Vietnam and around the world, and I am very happy to play a small role in this change.
There seems to be a lack of Vietnamese design documentation. A big part of making this magazine bilingual was to make information more accessible to the Vietnamese designers. Considering your work is monumental is Vietnamese type design, have you ever thought of translating the book into Vietnamese?
First, I would agree with the fact that there is a lack of content about Vietnamese design, in Vietnamese. In fact, when I did my research for Vietnamese Typography, I made a trip to Vietnam and searched for documents about design in Vietnamese bookstores, to no avail. In the end, I had to pretty much rely on my own knowledge of the Vietnamese language in order to be able to produce the book. Moreover, one of the weak points of the book is that I have included several Vietnamese-supported text typefaces as a starting point; however, none of them are made by a Vietnamese designer. The closest thing that I can find to a text typeface was Be Vietnam Pro by Lam Bao, which is open-source; I want to help these individuals by licensing their typefaces.
On translating the book, it definitely seems like a good idea, and I have actually had one person reach out to me about offering to help with the translation.
It seems pretty ironic that the Vietnamese text typefaces are being made by foreign designers…
But no! These type designers from all over the world have been doing it for years. I think that this industry is still very young and new in Vietnam, and requires time to grow. I don’t expect people to just come up with a typeface in a day or two; it takes years to make one. It takes a lot of patience. Then again, maybe I just don’t know the right people. I guess it’s on me as well to keep digging and finding these hidden gems within the community.
The typeface design process requires a lot of testing. For someone that does not know the Vietnamese language, this seems hard to be able to test for its legibility, as they do not have the natural inclination for the writing system. How do they overcome this challenge?
For this I can tell a little story. As the book slowly became sort of a guide to Vietnamese characters, I started receiving a lot of demo typefaces from designers all over the world to review. I would go through the diacritics, pointing out things that worked and things that didn’t, and how they could improve. For us Vietnamese, it’s very easy for us to spot irregularities in between the texts. An example I can give is the hook above; in serif typefaces, I really like for the hook above to have a tail, which designers often omit. I always ask them to include the tail and they are happy to make the change.
How are you doing now?
Well, I’m a web designer. After all these years, I’m still really excited about web design and typography. I’m still doing it now. And that’s pretty much it. Of course I do have hobbies and interests along the side, like skiing and snowboarding, but I’ll keep my daytime job (haha). I absolutely love the web and it makes it so easy to make my work be available to so many people. While the web itself has changed a lot over the years, the typography has been the thing that has kept my interest for all these years.
Any advice for new, young designers looking to get into typography?
Type is still very new in Vietnam, and I see young designers exploring more and more about this industry. It is definitely an exciting career. My advice is to follow your heart, be patient, and ask questions. The type community is very friendly; you could go up to any person and ask them about type, send them typefaces to review, and talk to them!