Designing for the dark mode had been an afterthought for me. I simply changed the text and background colors and leave everything else intact—even typography. Because I still preferred reading dark text on light background over light text on dark background, I spent most of my time designing for light mode and I had always loved serif text faces. If I have to read text on dark background, however, I prefer sans serif over serif. As a result, I thought why not changing up the typography as well for dark mode.

If you are reading this site with dark mode, the main text is set in Amica Pro, by Dave Rowland. Last year, I had the opportunity to advise Dave on Vietnamese for Amica Pro. I am not sure if he had a chance to implement my recommendations. The version I am using has not been updated. Although some minor tweaks would be better, but the diacritic design over all is pretty solid. For display text, I am using David Jonathan Ross’s Dattilo DJR Banner, which has a variable font.

If you read this site on dark mode, please let me know your feedback.

I am working on a small website for a freelance project. While all the pages are static, I would like to give my client an easy way to update the news section of the site. Implementing a content management system, such as WordPress or Kirby, just to do that is unnecessary.

Over the weekend, I spent an hour revisiting Mavo, which seems like a perfect solution for what I wanted to accomplish. Developed in the Haystack Group at MIT CSAIL and led by Lea Verou, Mavo allows an easy way to update website content with no backend database and without a single line of JavaScript. I gave it a try a few years ago, but got hung up on creating the JSON file in Github. This time, I set up the JSON file in Dropbox and it worked. I was able to make part of the web page editable. Furthermore, I added TinyMCE to give my client an easy way to update the content.

I was thrilled to see how friendly and intuitive it is to update website content with Mavo. This is something I have wanted for many years to offer to my freelance clients, but I don’t have the skill to develop myself. Unfortunately, the huge disappointment came when I viewed the source code. The content section was blank. When I turned off JavaScript, the content also disappeared on the page. I realized that the content was being injected using JavaScript.

If the main content of the page doesn’t show up when JavaScript is turned off, that is a major accessibility issue. Who has JavaScript turned off these days? I have been trying Safari on my iPhone without JavaScript and the experience has been so good that I am continuing to do so. For the website project, I am back to square one again. I should have known that Mavo is a JavaScript library; therefore, it depends on JavaScript to work. Although I can’t implement Mavo, my time spent was not wasted. It was a good learning experience.

I am excited to be working on a new website for Kristin Bair whose new novel is coming out in November. Last week, I sent her a test site to review and she tweeted:

My new website for my new novel (out in November!) is being designed by the ever-brilliant @visualgui. He sent me 1st test with questions. I want to look but I’m afraid to look. I am so weird. Not the only weirdo out there, right?

In 2009, Kristin approached me in several months leading up to the release of her debut novel, Thirsty. I don’t know for sure how she found me, but I suspect it had to do with the slideshow “Bonjour Vietnam.” Before I even designed the site for Thirsty, I asked Kristin if I could read the manuscript and she sent it to me. It was a dark yet beautiful and hopeful novel. After reading the entire book via PDF, I knew the site for the book had to take on a life of its own. Even though the site is aged now—it was before responsive design—I still love it.

In 2014, she followed up with The Art of Floating and I designed a simple, responsive landing page to promote it. I also read the second novel and loved her dreamlike writing and erotic storytelling.

For her third novel, Agatha Arch is Afraid of Everything, I am redesigning her website to promote the new book as well as to bring everything together. It will be a simple, elegant website for a wonderful writer. I pre-ordered the new novel and can’t wait to read it.

The first draft for the new site went well. Her feedback was positive. We’re on the right direction. It feels great that she trusts me to bring her visions to life. I love working on a small-scale website like this. It gives me a break from my regualr work. I can’t wait to share it when we launch it.

Joining the CSS Naked Day 2020, I am removing my CSS to reveal the bare-bones HTML of this site. Without the CSS makeups, the site looks plain, but still works well. It also makes me appreciate the power of CSS. I didn’t realize that my SVG logo has no width or height in HTML. As a result, the default logo takes up the entire browser width. I fixed it. Other than the logo, the blog is all text. I hope you enjoy it. This is as naked as I get online.

Visualgui is my personal blog started in 2003. It is a space for me not only to practice my writing but also to hone my web design skills. In addition to blogging vigorously almost everyday, I redesign it several times a year. The process is more iterative than comprehensive. The most drastic changes would be the typography. Whenever I discovered a new text face, I would love to set it here first. I focus mainly on readability.

This blog has been powered by WordPress from the get-go. The theme I had custom remained the same with just three files: index.php, style.css, and screenshot.png. That’s all. Even though WordPress has grown into a powerful content management system, I still use it as a blog system and nothing more. Keeping the theme simple allows me to quickly change the design with CSS. Most of the time, I can visualize the design in my head. I know what typefaces I want to use and how to set them on the page. I also can see how I layout my content. When I begin coding, I just modify my CSS file. The process is inspired by JAY-Z. He never wrote down his lyrics. He just went into the booth and recorded.

Because I make changes all the time, I have wanted to put together a page to showcase all the designs I have done over the years. Here are the screenshots dating back from 2004 for posterity.

After reading Professional Web Typography, a reader wrote:

Hi,

I contributed to your web book. Thank you for making the web a better place. I have been working on the web (semi-professionally) since around 2004. It’s amazing to me how much things have changed, yet how much they have remained the same. I’m intrigued with webfonts, but am frustrated that professional typefaces are largely cost prohibitive for someone like me that would seek to use them on a small personal website that would generate only dozens of pageviews in a very good month. I would support professional type designers if there were more affordable options.

In any case, thanks again for your web book and for your thoughts on Visualgui.com. I couldn’t stop until I went through all 19 pages in the design category.

Please keep sharing.

Regards,
MF

Here’s my response:

Dear MF,

Thank you for reading my web book. I feel your frustration on the cost for professional typefaces, but I also understand the amount of work goes into creating a professional typeface. For my personal use, I search for typefaces that I can afford.

For example, I am a member of the Font of the Month Club runs by David Jonathan Ross. For $6 a month, I have access to fun, experimental typefaces I can use for my personal projects. I also made a few investments in Future Fonts. I invested early; therefore, the cost was around $15 to $50. As the designers update their fonts, I get the latest releases for free.

If there’s a typeface I wanted but the price is high, I purchase only the fonts I needed. For example, I wanted to use Exchange, by Frere-Jones, for body text; therefore, I only bought two fonts (a regular and an italic) for $75. With just two styles, I know I cannot have bold and bold italic text, but I can turn them off easily with a few lines of CSS—that’s one of the beauties of the web.

If none of those above services work, you can always find a handful of decent typefaces on Google Fonts.

I wish you all the best with your typographic journey.

Thanks once again for contributing to my book.

Regards,

Donny Truong
donnytruong.com

Over the weekend, I decided to put together a print page on my portfolio website. I thought I would never touch print design, but here I am embracing it. Let’s reflect briefly on my journey to graphic design.

When I was a sophomore in college in the early 2000s, I landed an internship at the Trump Marina. The casino is no longer in business. I was supposed to be working and learning from a graphic designer in the marketing department, but he didn’t give me anything to do. I was bored out of my mind and was not learning much. I didn’t understand anything about printing resolutions and image qualities. I was so frustrated that I focused entirely on web and interactive design. For years, I hated print design.

In Vietnamese, there’s a saying, “You will get what you hate.” It came true when I started my career at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School almost ten years ago. In addition to my primary responsibility as a web services developer, I took on a few print design jobs including signages, banners, and covers. Then I applied for the MA program in graphic design at George Mason School of Art. To my surprised, I was accepted even though my portfolio didn’t include any print material.

Through the program, I learned from my graduate classmates on basic printing techniques. I also mastered Adobe Illustrator to complete most of my assignments. I am ashamed to admit that I still don’t know how to use Adobe InDesign. Then again, I don’t design the entire magazine or book; therefore, I can get by with just Illustrator. Now I take on print design at my job or freelance gigs from my kids’ Taekwondo class or Boy Scout.

What I enjoyed the most about graphic design are grid and typography. Those are my two primary tools to create print materials.

These days, I no longer develop websites using a content management system. WordPress has become way too complicated for me. MODX is solid, but it is not a simple solution for small websites. I made a few projects with Kirby. Unfortunately the upgrade process is not automatic like WordPress. When I upgraded a client project from version 2 to version 3, I had to go through quite a bit of steps.

Another major problem with using the CMS is that once I hand over the sites, the clients would mess up the way I designed the sites. They added inline styles and changed fonts. The visual editors screwed up the markups. I still see this problem with the new Gutenberg editor in WordPress.

After giving up on using CMSs, I came to realize that I can offer my clients full support of their sites. For a few clients, I have designed, developed, and maintained the sites for them. I use nothing, but HTML, CSS, and a bit of PHP to make the site easy to maintain and update. If they need to make updates once in a while, I can do so for hourly fees. They just drop me an email. If they update their website everyday, I am not the right designer for their project.

Because I do all the updates, I keep the markup clean. In addition, I have a copy of their website backup so they don’t have to worry about having their site hacked. Even if they were hacked, I can bright their site backup quickly. Our relationship becomes more like a partnership.

So if you have a need for a small website, I can help. Most projects will be less than $5,000. Let me be your designer, developer, and CMS. I will work with you to make your site fast, accessible, readable, and truly customized for your own brand. There will be no picking out templates like you do with other services.

Made the body text on this blog smaller and the leading a bit tighter. As I am writing longer posts these days, the body text needs to be smaller to improve readability.

On my professional portfolio, I swapped the body text from Roslindale Text, by David Jonathan Ross, to Frequenz, by Sebastian Losch. I kept Roslindale Display. I really love the contrast between a classic display face and a modern sans-serif body text.

I quietly switched out the wordmark for simplexpression. The new workmark is set in Roslindale. If you look closely, the first letter “s” and “ex” are set in Roslindale Italic. I had to make them a bit slanted because the “s” in Roslindale looks the same in normal and italic style. I wish the italic style is a bit different so I don’t have to make it slanted. For more of my logo design, check out my branding page.

I changed the typography for I Love Ngọc Lan as well. The new text face is Livvic, by Jacques Le Bailly and headers are set in Calistoga, by Yvonne Schuttler and Eben Sorkin. Just a bit of touching up the keep the sites stay fresh.

Tôi muốn đọc thơ Hồ Xuân Hương nhưng khi tìm đến trang Thi Viện thì chả muốn đọc. Cách thiết kế lộn xộn quá và trình bài không ưng ý nên tôi tự tạo ra một trang riêng gọn gàng hơn và dễ đọc hơn. Đặt biệt là chú trọng vào phông chữ cho nên tôi làm ra một trang để vào trong phần samples của nghệ thuật chữ Việt luôn. Chừng nào có dư một phút tôi sẽ mở lên đọc mấy bài thơ của Hồ Xuân Hương và học tiếng Việt luôn. Mời các bạn cùng đọc thơ của Hồ Xuân Hương.

Nếu bạn nào có ý khiến hay để tạo những trang web nho nhỏ hữu ích và để giới thiệu đến tiếng Việt của chúng ta thì liên lạc với tôi nhé. Không hứa trước nhưng có thời gian và cơ hội tôi sẽ làm.