The last project for this year’s graduate seminar is designing a series of three posters. Purpose for the posters could be informative, educational, political, social or decorative. Posters needs to work together individually and as a group to make a graphical statement. Computer typesetting and images could be used, but the typographical focal point must be created by hand.

After giving the project some thoughts, I wanted to do something fun. I picked phrases that Dao and Dan had said in the past to use for the posters. The three I picked are quite hilarious.

“Daddy, dump fuck.”

While we were driving one day, Dan said to me real loud, “Daddy, dump fuck.” I was shocked so I asked him, “What did you just call me?” He replied, “Dump fuck” and pointed me to the dump truck. My execution was to take pictures of the dump truck toys and used Photoshop to place the toys together by hand to form the word “Fuck.”

“Daddy, I am allergic to your singing.”

We were driving home from daycare and I hit a pretty terrible falsetto just to tease him and he gave such an idiosyncratic respond: “Daddy, I am allergic to your singing.” My execute was to draw musical notes in Illustrator and place them together by hand to form the word “singing.”

“Daddy look, it’s my tadpole.”

I still can’t figure out where Dan got the association from. I was about to give him a bath. As I put the water in the bathtub and put him in, he said to me, “Daddy look, it’s my tadpole.” Then he grabbed his penis. I asked him again, “Your what?” He replied, “Tadpole.” I laughed my ass off in silent.

This seminar has been fun. Creating analog type was much more pleasure than I thought. Special thanks to my wife for assisting me on a few pieces. She’s much more craftier than I am and she is so good at mounting.

For my video résumé, a graduate project in my class on professional design practices, I knew from the start that I would not appear in front of the camera talking about my résumé or my work. I took the professor’s advice to create something that I am passionate about to give potential employer my personality. My passion is for web design and typography; therefore, I created a short typographic motion to show why I love the web and why now’s the time for an exciting transformation to be a web designer. I used FreightSans, a strong, bold sans-serif typeface, to tie the video into my personal brand.

For the musical score, I sampled a clip from Charlie Parker’s “Now’s the Time.” The tune was written in the mid 40s when jazz was dominated by white swing band including Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Jimmy Dorsey. Parker wanted to take jazz back to Black American; therefore, he and Dizzy Gillespie started the bebop moment. Bebop required virtuosity and the ability to play furious speed. “Now’s the Time” is one of the pieces that marked the transformation from jazz dance club to the street. I wanted to use that transformational vibe to show “Now’s the Time” to be a web designer as typography is making its into the web.

For the leave behind project for my class on professional design practices, I created a six-panel accordion to be given out after a job interview. I wanted my perspective employer to know that I care about typography and that I pay attention to the type world. The front side of the piece has my contact information, a bit about myself and the title panel that reads: Jan Tschichold’s Typographic Rules. On the interior side, I listed out the six rules Tschichold has created. Because I wanted this piece to be simple, easy to produce and convenience to give out, I based the panel on the size of the business card. The final product ended up looking like my business card, but has some extra typographic information. If I would go to a real job interview, I would make this pieces ahead of time and give them out the interviewers instead of my business card. Killing two birds with one stone.

One of the challenges of working on the portfolio project [for my class on professional design practices] were choosing the works I would like to showcase. Instead of picking out 6 to 8 random pieces, I wanted to focus on a specific audience. After doing some research, I want to cater my portfolio for an interactive agency I had wanted to work at. Based in New York, Big Spaceship worked with clients in the entertainment industry including HBO, 20th Fox Century, Miramax and Ken Burns. In this portfolio project, I have carefully selected the pieces that show a variety of range, but still related to entertainment.

Sketches of Miles App

A prototype of a tablet app that would allow users (Miles Davis’s fans) to create their own sketches of Miles based on the records that they love. The app is straightforward with intuitive user interface to let users play around on their tablet. They could change the texts, draw their own sketches or import photos into the app. They could share their work with other fans as well as social media networks.

Vietjazz Brand Guidelines

Vietjazz is a recording company that connects and advances the two distinctive musical forces: Vietnamese music and jazz. I came up with the concept as music lover of both sides and wanted to married them into one. I designed the logo, stationery, applications (web site, app and album cover). I developed the responsive web site and all of its contents to provide the simplest standards and guidelines for the consistent use of the Vietjazz visual identity.

Go the Fuck to Sleep

As a father of two boys, I could related to Adam Mansbach’s Go the Fuck to Sleep. The inspiration came from Samuel L. Jackson’s narration of the book. I chose a straightforward san serif typeface to match up with Jackson’s expressive voice. The project turned to be a fun, experimental typography in motion.

Ao Dai Trang A Oi

Ao Trang is a non-profit organization that puts out a calendar each year featuring stunning photography of Vietnamese traditional white dress. In the past years, Ao Trang has donated over $136,000 to aid orphanages in Vietnam through direct delivery of practical supplies. The creative team at Ao Trang commissioned me to do a motion slideshow to showcase its photography. After browsing through its collection, which featured pure, modern Vietnamese’s beauty of the traditional white dress, I chose a musical piece that has the fusion of Vietnamese folk poetry and ambient futuristic sound. The combination of the images and musical score produced an organic, rich, and lyrical presentation.

Please Give Me

A special collaboration with photographer Justin Maxon to raise awareness of the victims of Agent Orange. The inspiration came from Thuy Tien’s soul-searching rendition of Trinh Cong Son’s “Xin Cho Toi.” The solo piano accompanying the painful but hopeful vocals sets the right tone for the message.

Film Rating Redesign

A graduate assignment to redesign the look and feel of the film rating system. The content, which based on MPAA rating system, stays the same. My job was to improve the visual information of the five major ratings: G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17. The new system uses visual progression to give viewers clear indication of each rating. I chose Adrian Frutiger’s Univers for its legibility.

The third assignment for our graduate seminar was to integrate handmade type with a location. The environment can be private or public and any size. My initial concept was to create the word “Law” out of law books in the library, but the class didn’t seem impressed. So I changed the environment to my home office, in which I housed a dozen of books on typography. With the help of the books, I created the word TYPE out of matting board as a display on my table where I work. The project turned out well and the class liked the concept better.

I refreshed my business card for my graduate course on professional design practices. I wanted to go into the Swiss direction because I have been doing a bit of reading about it. I submitted several conventional versions and threw in this one to see if it stood out. The professor liked it and I did as well. I always loved playing with big and tall typeface; therefore, League Gothic was a perfect choice for the name. As much as I wanted to stick with the same typeface for the entire card, League Gothic didn’t work well at small size; therefore, I substitute Univers for the rest of the information. I am going to print out about 100 copies and keep them for bookmarks. Who uses printed business card nowadays.

Hi, I am Donny and I run a small web studio called Visualgui.com.

Five years ago, a fiction writer named Kristin Bair O’Keeffe contacted me and asked if I would be interested in creating a web site to promote her upcoming first novel titled Thirsty. I jumped to the opportunity because it sounded like a fantastic project.

Before I even started to think about the design, I asked Kristin if I could read the novel first. She sent me the entire unedited manuscript. I read the whole book and it gave me everything I needed to design the site.

The story is about a Croatian woman who fell in love with an American. After they got married, she migrated to a steel town in Pittsburg where her husband lived and worked. He turned out to an abusive husband. It’s a dark, powerful and hopeful novel and I wanted to convey those elements right on the homepage.

Out of all if the images Kristin sent me, I chose the steel plant for the background. For the title of the book, I selected Baskerville, which is a transitional typeface to signify the woman’s transition from Croatia to America. The image of the butterfly, which suggested hope, was used throughout the book; therefore, I incorporated it into the design as well. For the secondary pages, I kept the dark header, but reverted the main content area to white for readability.

I mocked up a homepage, a secondary page and shared with Kristin my design process and she loved it immediately.

One of the things that I loved working with Kristin was that she cared deeply about her content. She had almost everything together before she even contacted me.

Once we launched the site, she asked me if I wanted to make a trailer for the book. With the storyboard she wrote and a musical score her friend created, I put together a short clip using Flash.

In a coincidence, her second novel, The Art of Floating, is also released today and she contacted me several months ago to create and landing page for it. I gave the page a responsive design to be displayed on multiple devices. Go check it out and get the book.

The ads for Simplexpression were produced for my graduate seminar project. The assignment was to create an integrative design of handcrafted types and digital components. The challenge was to gather the beads as well as the jewelry pieces that my wife had made and made them into letters. The arrangement alone took hours. Once I came up with the words using beads, I took photos of them and brought them into Photoshop to integrate digital typefaces. It was a fun project and well-received in class.

This mock interview is an assignment for my graduate course on professional design practices.

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Mr. Jim Van Meer who is a creative services manager at the American Petroleum Institute (API) for a web design position. Even though I prepared a portfolio presentation to showcase my expertise in responsive web design, I didn’t talk about my work. Mr. Van Meer had something else in mind.

Right off the bat, he asked me whether I would be the survival of the fittest or the survival of the cooperative. I answered the latter. I do the best work in a team environment and I provided an example of how I collaborated with the talented designers and developers at Vassar college to not only meet deadlines, but also used the best individual skills for the job.

One of the most intriguing questions he asked me was on standards and how I would present complex information in a simple manor. Without much time to think, I gave an example of web standards. I often had to explain to clients, supervisors and novice web designers the important of web standards. My analogy to help them understand web standards was the example of a dishwasher. Let’s say that your dishwasher broke and you need a replacement. A standard size would allow you to pick out a new dishwasher without worrying if it would fit in your kitchen. If you design your site with web standards, you’ll make your life easier as well as those whose responsible for maintaining the site that you designed.

The last question he asked me was why manhole covers are rounded. I knew that the rounded shape would prevent the covers from dropping into the hole, but I couldn’t articulate the reasons for it. Sometimes when I think hard about a logical reason, I get blank out.

When it was my turn for questions, I asked Mr. Van Meer what he enjoyed most working here and he replied the trust the boss gave him, the flexibility as well as the creative freedom. In term of digital products and services, Mr. Van Meer would like to see API to be 100% web base, which includes online training, various devices and apps, in the next two years. The skillsets that Mr. Van Meer is looking to fill with a new hire are the ability to design and turning designs into web, app and digital medium.

After our interview, Mr. Van Meer explained that the questions he asked were to get to know the candidate. He wanted to see the candidate’s quick reaction as well as his ability to work in a creative yet demanding environment. The reason he didn’t want me to present my portfolio was that he already knew what I was capable of doing through my web site and portfolio. He said, “If I didn’t think you could do what we were looking for, I wouldn’t bring you in for an interview.”

I had learn a great deal through our interview and I hope I did well.

The first assignment in Professional Design Practices, an advanced studio course on special topics, was a do-over project. After looking at my portfolio, my professor who also taught the branding course last semester suggested that I redo Sketches of Miles. It would give me a chance to finesse the typography. At first I was not thrilled because Sketches of Miles was a side project to teach myself HTML5 and CSS3 a few years ago. The typography was rough because it use design using CSS rather than Photoshop or Illustrator. The do-over project was to take a few sketches and make them into a series of posters.

After spending the weekend thinking deeper into the project, I came up with a different concept. Rather than going from the web back to print, I wanted to go forward to an app, particularly for the iPad. Instead of me making the sketches, I wanted to design an interactive app that would allow Miles’ freaks like myself to create their own sketches.

The app is very straightforward. Once fans downloaded the app, they could sign up using Facebook, Twitter or Google credential. Once they logged in they become the users. On the home screen they could see a gallery of sketches that other fans have created. They also have an option to create their own. I designed a set of very simple user interface to let the users play around on their iPad. They could change the texts, draw their own sketches or import graphics into the app. Once they are done sketching, they could share their work with other fans as well as other social media networks.

The app turned out to be a fun project. After creating the interface for the app, I also created a handful of sketches to show what users can do with the app. With the timeline as well as the scope of the class, which focuses only on design, I only get to do the prototype of the app. Besides, I don’t have the mobile development skills to create a robust app like that. It is definitely a great project to learn iOS programming. Maybe that would be down the line. Still, the prototype is worth checking out.