Emma Shean was finishing up her final year of university at Arts University Bournemouth and she was working on her dissertation on Vietnamese typography. She found my web book through her research and reached out to me for an interview. In the synopsis of her dissertation, she writes:
This essay will look at the typography in Vietnam, where I spent a month on a cultural immersion trip. It will begin by setting the scene of Vietnamese typography in terms of photographs of billboards, advertisements and posters, and analysing their colours and their significance in Vietnamese culture.
I will then delve into the history of the Vietnamese language, its origins, and the challenges of getting all the Vietnamese diacritics digitally encoded by Unicode and the lack of fonts with Vietnamese accessibility due to this late encoding. Donny Trương is my case study for advocating for this accessibility, and I will research how he is revolutionising graphic design and what fonts he recommends for Vietnamese using answers from questions that I asked him over email and secondary research. This will lead into the history and analysis of these fonts and why they are good for Vietnamese characters.
The Dissertation Interview
Do you think that custom designs for typefaces in Vietnam (including their diacritics) could boost their design economy?
Absolutely! Type design is still fairly new in Vietnam; therefore, the opportunity to boost the design economy in this area is now. By designing your typefaces with Vietnamese diacritics, you can reach millions of Vietnamese readers and much more with Latin readers around the world. It is definitely a career to look into.
How do you think the Vietnamese design world compares to that of other countries and cultures?
When I was studying design in college over 20 years ago, I didn’t see much attention paid to design in Vietnam and in Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam. That has changed now with more awareness of design. More design education is being offered in Vietnam. More young Vietnamese are getting into design. More Vietnamese design agencies are popping up. As Vietnam is growing, the demand for design and marketing are also growing to catch up with western countries.
Is your culture important to your work, or, if not, what drives your inspiration?
Yes, Vietnamese culture is very important to me. I left Vietnam when I was eleven years old and I always carried my Vietnamese culture with me. I listened to Vietnamese music and read Vietnamese literature profusely.
I often get my inspiration from my Vietnamese background. In 2006, I put together a Flash slideshow of Vietnam photography after listening to a French tune titled “Bonjour Vietnam,” performed by Phạm Quỳnh Anh. The slideshow reached many Vietnamese around the world and in Vietnam. Recently, I created a typographic sample page on “Bonjour Vietnam” for posterity.
Even though Vietnamese Typography was launched in 2015 and revised in 2018, I still add new content to the book site, particularly the section featuring typographic samples. These samples are driven by Vietnamese culture.
For your logos, how do you find typefaces to use, or do you design them yourself? Have you ever had to use a completely different typeface when you realised they can’t support Vietnamese diacritics?
For logos, I chose the typeface that would be appropriate for the brand. If the selected typeface had Vietnamese diacritics, that would be great. If not, I would add them myself. I don’t design typefaces, but I can customize an existing one just for the logo.
As for the second part of your question, I have not run into that issue because my priority for choosing a typeface is support for the Vietnamese language. If a typeface didn’t support Vietnamese diacritics, I wouldn’t consider using it for a project that required Vietnamese text. If I must use that particular typeface with no Vietnamese support, I would reach out to the designers to see if they would expand their fonts to support Vietnamese. I have all the resources that they need and I can also advise them in the design process for Vietnamese diacritics.
In a 2016 interview with Medium, you said that “you don’t think the Vietnamese people pay much attention to typography.” Do you still think this is the case, or has that changed in recent years as graphic design becomes more popular in Vietnam? Also, why did you initially think they didn’t pay much attention to it?
I made that statement in 2016 because I was frustrated with the countless Vietnamese online publications using typefaces that didn’t support the Vietnamese language.
On the web, if a font didn’t have Vietnamese diacritics, browsers would fall back to the system font. As a result, browsers would display two different fonts together.
The glaring examples where headlines were set in a scripted font, but the letters with diacritics were defaulted to a sans-serif font. I came across these issues on both the web and printed materials; therefore, I came to a conclusion that many Vietnamese people did not pay attention to Vietnamese typography.
I still spot mixed font issues once in a while these days, but I have seen tremendous improvements as graphic design becomes more popular in Vietnam. I also notice the change in the typographic scene. Through Vietnamese Typography, I talked to young Vietnamese graphic designers who paid attention to typesetting. I also talked to young type designers who created typefaces with attention to diacritics. I am happy to see the changes.
And finally, why did you decide to go to America for your masters degree, instead of staying in Vietnam?
I decided to get my masters at George Mason University because of the tuition exemption for employees. At the time, I was a web services developer at the law school. I didn’t give much thought when I applied. I didn’t think I could get into the MA graphic design program because I didn’t do much print design. Most of my works were digital. I was surprised when I got accepted.
I didn’t expect much from the program, but it worked out well at the end because I had to do a final thesis, which turned out to be Vietnamese Typography.