Last night I spent two hours editing and redesigning my résumé. I wanted to detach it from the ON Designs look and feel. I wanted my résumé to stand alone rather than being part of my portfolio.

In addition, I wanted to move away from creating two separate print and web versions. They are a bit of a pain to update. I eliminated the Illustrator version by generating a PDF from the webpage.

I wanted my résumé to be clean, simple, legible, and readable. I went back to a two-column design with a 960-grid layout. The types are set in Mr and Mrs Eaves, designed by Zuzana Licko. Take a look.

Meryl Streep:

[T]here was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good; there was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh, and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out of my head, because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose.

Another reason to love this talented actress.

Robin Rendle on the nature of the web:

[T]he web will always be a wild and finicky canvas for us to work with; we’ll have to be creative in the ways that we help older browsers that don’t support these features. So although I don’t believe that the web hates beautiful typography, there certainly is a tension between the web and the old typography, where control over every element on the page was relatively easy and absolute.

Rendle on accessibility:

What about accessibility and the preservation of the text? Making sure that everyone can simply read the text in every browser is more important than just about any typographic flourish that we can implement. And so with that in mind, whenever we stumble over a new feature for the web we have to question whether it will truly improve the reading experience.

He concludes:

There are infinite futures of typography, and the opportunities only expand when new browsers, new features, new devices become available to us. All that’s required is a little patience and a healthy dose of curiosity.

Simon Loxley, Type is Beautiful, (p.2):

Typefaces communicate moods and feelings: some are considered elegant or refined, while others seem bold, radical or whimsical. Typefaces can reflect the fashions or the zeitgeist of an era, often to a surprising degree. Some typefaces were created for a specific purpose. Some are easy to read and draw little attention to themselves; others are meant to grab your attention, but only for the purpose of a few words. Which font is chosen for any given communication matters a great deal, since it conveys a whole world of meaning, both blatant and subliminal, and much time, thought and money continue to be spent to try to get it right.

Simon Loxley, Type is Beautiful, (p.23):

Without the italic, typography would be visually the poorer, and in practical terms, in its primary aim of communication, severely compromised.

The story behind the fifty selected typefaces, including Baskerville, Comic Sans, Futura, Garamond, and Helvetica, in this book has been told many times before. Loxley doesn’t add anything new, but his writing is brief and approachable. If you know your type history, skip it. If you don’t, read it, design students in particular.

Are you designing a new typeface or subsetting your existing fonts to support Vietnamese? I would love to help. I am offering advising Vietnamese typography as a service. For a small, one-time fee, I will review your Vietnamese characters to make sure they are properly positioned, legible, and readable. I will also provide suggestions on how to make your typeface feels natural to Vietnamese readers. Learn more.

Touched up I Love Ngọc Lan a bit for 2017. The homepage featured a grid of photos. The type is now set in Alda, by Berton Hasebe. The activity on the site has been quiet for a while and I don’t expect to have much interactions in the next few years. I still hope to keep it as a place to remember one of the most beloved Vietnamese singers. The site has been online for 14 years and I’ll keep it running as long as I can.

Ann Bessemans, Digital Fonts and Reading, (p.29):

A remarkable finding from the objective legibility research is that children with normal vision read with reliably fewer errors when the serif typeface DTL Documenta was used, rather than the sans serif Frutiger. This result is somewhat surprising because children (especially beginning readers) mainly read with a sans serif in primary school.

If you are a Vietnamese parent who is still holding on to the outdated traditional values, I advise you to be open-minded with your gay children.

Being gay is not a sickness. You can’t straightened him up. You can’t make him love another female. How would you feel if your mother forces you to love another woman? You can’t do that, right? Being gay is not a choice. It is who he is. Rather than opposing him, why don’t you embrace him? He needs your love and support.

Being gay is not abnormal. He doesn’t need any medication. He needs your acceptance. He is still your son. Don’t push him away.