Raksa Yin, co-programming director at AIGA DC, writes:

Hi Donny,

I’m reaching out to say you were nominated into our AAPI Heritage Month social media campaign. Through this campaign in May, we want to highlight AAPI creatives doing interesting works telling their heritage story, showing awareness of AAPI issues or building a safe space for AAPI voices.

I want to say congrats! You will be featured in our upcoming social media campaign with other AAPI creatives. Your Vietnamese Typography stood out and it’s very unique.

I am deeply honored for the nomination.

Robin Riddle writes:

So websites can be serious things; we can turn them into great wells for us to cast our anxieties into, or stress balls for us to relieve the pressure of our lives. But a website can also be a delicately wrapped bundle of words and colors, with the express purpose only to make someone you love smile.

I love Robin’s perspective on creating website as a gift for someone you love. Although I design websites for a living, I also enjoy crafting small pages for friends, family members, colleagues, and acquaintances. Let’s take a trip down to the memory lane to see what I had designed as gifts.

As far back as I can remember, I designed the very first website for La Salle University’s Multicultural and International Center, where I did my work study. It was a gift for Ms. Cherylyn L. Rush, my mentor and former supervisor. Ms. Rush is still holding down the spot 20 years after I graduated. I still remember the distinctive homepage, which was a collage of faces from different ethnicities. It was inspired by a poster Ms. Rush had on the wall in her office.

One of my favorite spots at La Salle was the art collection in the Art Museum even though I was clueless about art. As a design student, I knew if I could get this site on my portfolio I would have no problem getting clients and jobs. I approached the director and chief curator of the museum to let me redesign its boring website. I told her it would be my gift to the school. She was grateful to hand over the keys (FTP) to the server. I remember the site was color coded to showcase different rooms and collections.

When La Salle’s Digital Arts first launched, I wanted to get into the program even though I knew nothing about arts and digital. Without any design foundation, I dived right in. When most of my classmates were learning Photoshop and Illustrator, I took up Flash. The combination of animation, music, and graphics made Flash an ideal tool at the time. When DArt needed a website to promote its program, I was chosen to design it. It was a gift for the program that launched my career.

In the summer during my college years, I often visited the Upward Bound office at Millersville University. The program had a website, but it was outdated. I asked Ms. Doris Cross, the director of the program and my mentor, to allow me to redesign the site as a gift for the program that gave me the opportunity to pursue my career in design. I was into Flash at the time; therefore, I created a fun intro with music loops, text effects, and photos of kids in the program. When I showed it to Ms. Cross, she danced to it and called all of her staff members into her office to check it out. It was such a wonderful feeling to see my work made them smile.

One of my favorite websites I designed and still maintained is I Love Ngọc Lan. It was a gift to the fans of one of the beloved Vietnamese singers whose life got cut short by multiple sclerosis. Like many of her fans around the world, I loved Ngọc Lan’s angelic voice as well as her breathtaking beauty. Even though she had passed away 20 years ago, her music is still alive today.

A couple of years ago when Jim Van Meer, a dear friend and former classmate from the graduate graphic design program at George Mason, started his own agency, he tapped me to create the website for him. Thinkpoint Creative was a gift for him and a collaboration between us.

A few months ago, I designed and developed the Educational Partnerships for Success website for Ms. Joy Tiên who is my life-long mentor. Ms. Tiên and I go all the way back to the Upward Bound program. She has helped many immigrant kids like myself succeeded in our educational endeavor. This little gift is to show my appreciation for her compassionate work.

When I chose Vietnamese Typography as my thesis to earn a master of arts in graphic design, I wanted to make it freely available; therefore, I chose the platform I know best. I created this website as a gift to the type community so they can support my native language. I hope I had played a small role in the increasing support for Vietnamese in the type community.

I wrote Professional Web Typography as an independent study for my MA program in graphic design. I chose the web as publishing platform and as a gift to the web community.

For my personal projects, I created a webpage as a gift for my kids to celebrate the day they were born. It is also a place I can look up quickly when I need their birth dates to fill out forms. In opposite to celebrate life, I also created tribute websites to honor those loved ones I lost. I created a tribute site for my father-in-law when he passed away in 2012. He had stage-four lung cancer. I created a tribute page for my father when he passed last year. He had stage-four pancreatic cancer. A month later, I created a tribute site for my mother. She passed away after a brutal battle with COVID-19.

As Robin pointed out, websites can be made “to make someone you love smile.” I know my parents and father-in-law are smiling down on me from heaven.

I was elated to see one of my posts was quoted in one of my favorite websites. I have been following Robin Rendle’s blog and newsletter for a while. I admire his writing, both style and subjects. We shared some common interests including typography and web design. I am glad that he found “Inheritance” resonated with him and that we both have thought about the life of our blogs. He expands on it:

At some point or another this website, this URL, won’t resolve though. Maybe the Internet Archive will stick around for a while, but then everything is locked within this vast archive.

But if my URL is dead, my website dies with it.

My work shouldn’t be presented in the Smithsonian behind glass or anything, I’m just pointing at this enormous flaw in the architecture of the web itself: you’re renting servers and renting URLs. Nothing is permanent because on the web we don’t really own any space, we’re just borrowing land temporarily.

I dashed off that post when my son said, “When you die, I will read your Visualgui.” I have thought about this topic when Kevin Davis, a former colleague at Vassar College, passed away in 2010. Kevin was a fantastic designer and developer. His website (alazanto.org) was beautiful and distinctively personal. It was created in Flash, but he fed in his poems through XML. After he died, I still visited his site and read the poems he had written. Then one day, the site stopped working because Flash was no longer supported and was uninstalled on my browsers. I guess he didn’t have a chance to update his site to HTML and CSS. Then one day it was completely gone. I guess his payment had ran out and he didn’t leave his keys to anyone else.

What will I leave my children when I die? Since I don’t have anything worthy or much money, I haven’t thought about it yet. Yesterday, Đán told me, “When you die, I will read your Visualgui.” I smiled at him and asked, “Will you and Đạo take care of it when I die?” He replied, “Sure, we will take care of it for you.”

I often wondered what will happen to my websites when I die. Will they just die with me? I have invested a tremendous amount of time and effort into them. This blog, in particular, has documented 18 years of my life. It has become my daily journal and I haven’t intended to stop writing. I will continue to maintain and redesign it for as long as I can.

Even though I make a living as a professional web designer, I find my passion and motivation to stay in the game from my personal websites. The web has not only allowed me to feed my family, it also allowed me to express myself. I can share anything to the world from just a few clicks away. When I wrote Vietnamese Typography, as my final thesis for my MA in graphic design, I knew that the only way to reach as many type designers and typographers all over the world was to publish it as a website. I also wanted to make it freely available for anyone to read. I did not expect it to become my little consulting business on the side.

I love the web and I love making websites that are meant to stay around for a long time. The tribute website I created for Ngọc Lan has been around for 18 years. Even though it is no longer as active as it was in the early days, I still am maintaining it for as long as I can.

A few years before Mr. Đình Cường passed away, his health was declining. His son hired me to put together a website as a special gift for him. Now the site has become an archive of his artworks. His legacy will live on as long as his son maintains the website. Thơ mưa, a book of poetry by Cao Nguyên, is another website that will stay on for as long as the author wants to keep it.

As for my own blog, I am not sure how long I will continue to keep it, but I am happy that Đán is willing to take care of it after I die. My sites might have no value to anyone else, but they are my pride and legacy. I designed them with pure HTML and CSS so that they will stay around for a long time. Fancy frameworks come and go, HTML and CSS stay around. I also host my webfonts along with my websites, instead of using a third party, to make sure that they will continue to work in the future.

Yesterday, Đạo mentioned that he had gone through 400 pages of my blog and read posts that were specifically about our family. He is now in 2009 and only has six more years of materials to read through. Only my own son has that much dedication to my writing and that means the whole world to me.

After checking out Mapping Corruption, an interactive exhibit I had developed for The American Prospect, an art director at Mural Arts Philadelphia had reached out to me last year to see if I would be interested in developing an artistic, informational project related to COVID-19. Of course, I jumped on board. The day we scheduled for a kick-off meeting, my mom went on the ventilator. I had to drop the project.

A few weeks ago, I sent them an email to give them the reason I had to drop the ball on them and hoped that they had found a developer to take on the project. They were in the process of interviewing several candidates, but decided to work with me. I was ecstatic that they would give me another shot. I hope I won’t let them down.

We kicked off the meeting last week and I loved their illustrations. The information will also be useful. I am glad that they will publish these materials as an interactive, informational website. I can’t wait to share it once we launch. Of course, I will make the announcement once it goes live. Anything related to COVID-19 is personal to me. I will dedicate this project to my beloved mother.

Cuối tháng 12 năm ngoái, Nguyễn Đặng Việt Anh, một người bạn trẻ đa tài trong ngành UX (trải nghiệm người dùng), ngỏ ý tặng tôi bộ board game “Chọi Chữ” bạn đã sáng chế. Việt Anh muốn bày tỏ sự cảm ơn của bạn ấy với tôi về dự án Vietnamese Typography. Việt Anh chia sẻ:

Mình rất respect quyển sách Vietnamese Typography của bạn. Không những là vì nội dung rất hay mà còn vì quyết định của bạn chia sẻ miễn phí trên mạng, tạo ra impacts lớn đến những người muốn hỗ trợ tiếng Việt. Xin cám ơn bạn.

Tôi rất vui khi đọc những lời của bạn. Hãnh diện hơn là bạn đã lấy nguồn cảm hứng từ quyển sách của tôi tạo ra bộ game “Chọi Chữ” để phổ biến chữ Việt của chúng ta ra thế giới. Dĩ nhiên tôi nhận ngay món quà đặc biệt này của bạn.

Món quà đã được gửi đến hơn một tháng rồi mà tôi vẫn chưa có cơ hội để chơi thử. Hôm qua mở ra đọc hướng dẫn và chơi thử thấy cũng thú vị. Thiết kế đẹp và cứng cáp. Cách chơi cũng đơn giản nhưng hữu ích trong việc học tiếng Việt. Hôm nào lôi mấy con ra chơi thử. Hoặc khi nào rảnh dụ vợ ra chọi chữ. Ai thua thì lột.

Nếu ai hứng thú muốn mua bộ game này, hãy vào trang Na Board Game đặt hàng nhé.

My nephew Eric is a straight-A student and he has a passion for design. I used to believe that you have to follow your passion, but I would like him to go into the medical field. Being in a life-and-death situation, my design passion is utterly useless. The decision-making process has been extremely hard. I never had to face something like this until now and I don’t have the experience or the expertise to make these difficult choices.

No one dies if I picked a serif over a sans-serif typeface. No life is on the line if I picked a darker or lighter shade of blue. No one cares if the logo is too big. I am at the point where I am too tired to fight for design. If my superiors want orange, I’ll give them orange. I am not going to bother explaining to them why, from a design perspective, they should go with red instead. I would let them have it.

In a life-and-death crisis, one wrong decision could make me regret it for the rest of my life even if the outcome won’t change. To get the medical expert’s advise, I have to reach out to a friend I haven’t seen in twenty-something years, a wife of a friend I have never met, a sister-in-law of my niece I met once, a friend’s husband, or my wife’s cousin. I am very grateful for their generosities and kindness, but I also feel extremely bad. I wonder if they have to give medical advice to family members and friends all the time. I wish I could return a favor. If any of them need a website, I will do it for free. That’s my offer.

I told my wife that I hope at least one of our four kids will become a doctor. Fingers crossed!

Gần đây tôi hay nghe lại nhạc Phú Quang, nhất là với giọng hát của Quang Lý và Ngọc Anh. Nghe lời nhạc của ông đẹp và thơ mộng nên tôi muốn thiết kế một trang web nhạc gồm những sáng tác của ông.

Thứ nhất là để làm mẫu cho nghệ thuật chữ Việt (Vietnamese Typography). Gần đây tôi thu được bộ chữ Harriet, thiết kế của Jackson Showalter-Cavanaugh. Anh thiết kế những dấu Việt đẹp và rõ nên tôi muốn dùng để làm một dẫn chứng về chữ Việt.

Thứ hai là để làm thỏa mãn bản thân. Tôi có sở thích đọc lời nhạc như đọc thơ qua iPhone. Những lúc xếp hàng đợi mua ly cà phê hoặc đợi trả tiền ở Costco, tôi mở trang web nhạc ra đọc thay vì lướt qua Twitter hay Facebook. Tuy lời nhạc tìm rất dễ dàng qua Google nhưng những trang nhạc thường chỉ để từng bài chứ không hết những bài hát của một nhạc sĩ. Đa số những trang nhạc đó load rất chậm vì họ kèm theo quảng cáo và họ chỉ dùng phông chữ thường (generic). Tôi muốn dùng chữ khác hơn và dễ đọc hơn.

Mỗi khi đọc hết một bài trên những trang nhạc khác, tôi lại phải tìm đọc bài khác. Cho nên tôi dồn hết tất cả những tác phẩm của một nhạc sĩ vào một trang theo thứ tự của tựa đề. Đọc hết một bài thì scroll tiếp đến bài kế. Khi nào ngưng đọc vẫn để trang web như vậy không đóng lại và thế thì lần sau sẽ đọc tiếp.

Tôi đã tạo ra tập nhạc của Trịnh Công Sơn, lời rap của Rhymastic, và tập thơ của Hồ Xuân Hương. Những trang này xem như những sưu tầm riêng của tôi. Nếu như sau này những trang nhạc không còn nữa, tôi vẫn còn lưu lại cho mình. Tuy hơi tốn công một chút nhưng thiết kế cũng vui vui. Sẵn tiện học luôn chữ Việt. Dự án kế tiếp tôi sẽ làm khi thời gian cho phép sẽ là những tác phẩm của nhạc sĩ Diệu Hương. Nhưng bây giờ mời các bạn vào đọc những lời nhạc của nhạc sĩ Phú Quang.

I only recently discovered the HTML Details element and I am loving it. I immediately applied it on the footer of this blog to hide and show additional information such as about, contact, feeds, privacy, and so on.

In the previous version of my blog, I had everything listed on the footer, which got tedious to scroll, especially on mobile devices. Then I moved everything to an info page. That worked out OK, but I was not too crazy about the extra click. In addition, I don’t want to make an extra page for this blog. I wanted to keep only posts and no pages. Because I redesign this blog so often, I wanted to keep it as simple as possible so I can quickly go and give it a redesign without having to worry about a page format.

As a result, I brought all the additional information back to the footer, but put everything into a disclosure widget using the details and summary elements. To my amazement, they worked as expected without using any CSS or JavaScript. Take a look.

Nhờ quyển sách Vietnamese Typography (Nghệ thuật chữ Việt) mà tôi được cơ hội làm việc với những nhà thiết kế chữ từ Á Châu đến Âu Châu từ Nam Mỹ đến Bắc Mỹ. Tôi được họ tin tưởng trong việc nhật xét và góp ý để chữ của họ được rõ ràng và dễ dàng cho người Việt đọc. Được đóng góp một phần nho nhỏ trong công việc đưa nghệ thuật chữ Việt được dồi dào hơn là một sự vui sướng cho những con tim yêu thương chữ Việt như tôi.

Gần đây nhất, tôi được làm việc với Stephen Nixon qua bộ chữ mới Name Sans của anh được thiết kế dựa theo những bảng tên mặc khảm của NYC Subway. Name Sans đã được văn phòng Thống Kê Dân Số của tiểu bang New York chọn làm phông chữ nên họ yêu cầu anh Stephen làm bộ chữ với tiếng Việt và anh Stephen đã tìm đến tôi.

Tuy Name Sans vẫn chưa hoàn tất nhưng tôi tin chắc sẽ là một bộ phông rất hữu dụng, đặc biệt là Name Sans có tiếng nói Việt cho người Việt.