Steve Jobs might not have predicted it, but his power over kids is undeniable. Đán woke up this morning and asked if he is going to school today. When I said yes, he got upset, “I don’t want to go to stupid school.” When I took him into the bathroom, he asked me, “Can I play on your iPhone?” I replied, “If you’re a good boy, I’ll let you play on the way to school.” His face lid up and responded, “Yes daddy, I will do everything you ask me to.”

He brushed his teeth, put on his clothes, kissed his brothers, mother, and grandma goodbye. We went to Dunkin’ Donuts for his favorite bacon, egg, and cheese Wake-Up Wrap. He played on the iPhone while I drive him to school. It was such a painless, pleasant morning. No fighting, no arguing, no dragging, no carrying, no delaying. If this is how he behaves every morning, I am fine with letting playing on the iPhone. If he smartens up and doesn’t throw a tantrum when I asked him to turn it off, I can let him have it.

Yesterday we went to Philly to attend my cousin’s wedding. We had a fantastic time witnessing two people celebrating their life together. Tonight before bedtime, Đạo asked me a few questions about marriage and I found them to be fascinating. Just out of the blue, the conversation started like this:

Đạo: Daddy, can I not get married?
Dad: Of course you can, if you don’t want to. But don’t you want to be like mommy and daddy? We love each other and we have you guys as a family.
Đạo: Does it mean I will be alone if I won’t get married?
Dad: No, not really, but are you comfortable being alone?
Đạo: No… Can a boy married a boy?
Dad: Sure, if they love each other.
Đạo: Oh my…
Dad: Why you say that?
Đạo: That’s just weird.
Dad: Why is that weird?
Đạo: I don’t know… Can a girl married a girl?
Dad: Sure, if they love each other.
Đạo: I didn’t know that.
Dad: Well, now you know.
Đạo: How about dating?
Dad: What about it?
Đạo: I saw on Minecraft that they go on a date. What do you do on a date.
Dad: You can go to a movie and have dinner like mommy and daddy did.
Đạo: How about Paris? Can you go on a date in Paris?
Dad: Of course, that would be so romantic.
Đạo: Does Paris have toys?

Our conversation switched to toys, but I thought some of his questions were intriguing. It makes me realize that my seven-year-old son is ready to have some real conversations.

I haven’t written much about the boys lately. They are stressing the life out of me. When we were on vacation last week, I spent most of my waking hours watching and yelling at the two older boys.

Đán, in particular, is going through his horrifying-four stage. He breaks down and screams when he doesn’t get the iPad. He forces us to limit his time even more. I am fine with him playing on the iPad. I myself use my iPhone for reading or my laptop to do my personal projects. It’s an issue when he could not turn it off when we asked him to. He goes into this addictive mood.

On the bright side, he has some great sense of humor. Last Tuesday, I took him back to daycare after a week-long vacation. The first thing he told me was, “Daddy, there’s no [parking] space. Let’s go back home.” Last night, I gave him a pat on his butt for taking a bath and putting on his clothes all by himself. He turned around and said, “Daddy, I am going to bring you to justice.” Đạo was like, “Where did you learn that from?”

Speaking of Đạo, he, too, addicted to the iPad, but he understands the consequences if he acted up when we asked him to turn it off. Most of the time he would listen. He likes to talk a lot of crap; therefore, he always gets into a fight with Đán. He doesn’t hit his brother, but his brother keeps throw punches at him and that drives me crazy. Đạo has some sharing issues, but he is a sweet brother, especially to Xuân.

Speaking of Xuân, he is now seven months. He is the cutest. He loves to eat; therefore, feeding him is a joy. I love spending time putting food in his mouth. I also enjoy strolling or jogging with him, which I haven’t done as much as I would like to. The stresses weakened my motivation. I am trying hard to get everything out of my head. I don’t know why I let things that I cannot control and little things that are unnecessary get to me. I am working on refocusing my attention on things that matter to me the most and fuck everything else. I can do it. I know I can and I will.

So I went from Hypatia Sans to using system fonts to Alda and Acumin in one week. The system font is simply not cutting it. I am keeping the minimal WordPress theme, but pulled out of the 10K Apart contest. Again this is my personal site so I get to play with it as much as I want to, but I think this is it for the moment. I’ll do a major redesign in early 2017. Richard Fink’s “Webfonts on the Prairie” resonates with me and brings me back to using webfonts again even though the file size is tremendous. Then again, typography is the only design element on this site so I am OK with making the investment in fonts.

Thơ Mưa gets new fonts. The text face is Cormorant Garamond and the title is set in Cormorant Upright. Both typefaces designed by Christian Thalmann for Google Fonts. They look great for literary work.

To participate in the 10K Apart contest, I redesigned and recoded my personal blog, which runs on WordPress. The first challenge is that I must rebuild my WordPress theme to deliver a compelling experience in 10 kilobytes. In addition, I write in both English and Vietnamese; therefore, my theme must support Vietnamese characters.

Like the web, WordPress theming has become bloated with front-end frameworks and JavaScript dependencies. When I first learned WordPress back in version one, its Classic theme was simple and easy to grasp because it only contained ten files. In contrast, a modern theme like Twenty Sixteen has fifty-one files. WordPress theming has become too complex over the years. To get back to the basics, I scrapped my previous themes and started a brand new one from scratch with just two files: index.php and style.css. I wanted to control every markup that goes into the theme; therefore, I applied PHP functions to only dynamic contents and used as much static components as I can to improve the processing time. The result was a lightweight template that accommodated my design.

The other half of the battle was to support the Vietnamese language. If I used a custom typeface that has Vietnamese subsets, the filesize for the fonts alone will be over 100 kilobytes. I had no choice but to go with the system fonts. For body text, I count on Times New Roman as my first choice. If Times New Roman is not available, I fall back to Times, and system serif if all failed. Headlines are set in Tahoma and fall back to Verdana and system sans-serif. The wordmark is set in Impact and fall back to Haettenschweiler, Arial Narrow Bold, and system sans-serif.

In addition to typography, responsive design and accessible played an important role; therefore, I took advantage of CSS Flexible Box for layout and ARIA Landmarks for screen readers. Of course, the goal for the 10K Apart contest is performance. For my submission, I put a static demo, which is under 10 kilobytes, on Github. To experience the live version, visit Visualgui.

I drew the inspiration for this little redesign from rereading Marty Neumeier’s excellent The Brand Gap while on vacation. The entire book is set in large Helvetica with generous leading. It is surprisingly easy to read. At first, I was going for Acumin Pro, but instead I went with Hypatia Sans, designed by Thomas Phinney and Paul D. Hunt. I was not too fond of this eccentric typeface, geometric sans with humanist undertones, at first, but it grows on me. It has quite a bit of personality, which is not a typical choice for running text. This is a personal blog so why not?

In addition to the typeface, I brought back the sidebar to bring back the good old blog design. I have a hate and love relationship with the sidebar, but I am sticking with it for now. I also went back to pure white background with black text to simplify the design. I hope you enjoy this little redesign.

I am still enjoying myself at the the beautiful Siesta Key island. I’ll update this blog next week. Time to hit the beach.

An expansive collection of George Lois’s logos ranging from successful, unusual to rejected works. His short, smart, and humorous comments on each piece make the book engaging. One in particular is his concept for Novak Djokovic’s active sport wear. He writes, “The extroverted Serbian, Novak Djokovic, one of the greatest tennis players of all time, didn’t have the balls to run with this logo.” If you’re into logo design, this book is a must-have by your side.

Added a new portfolio page showcasing the branding for Antonin Scalia Law School. Take a look.

I was listening to a design podcast on the topic of creating a portfolio. The two hosts spent about forty minutes discussing typical-but-helpful tips such as what makes a great portfolio, what projects to include, and how to display the works. 

In the last few minutes of the episode, they recommended designers to invest in an online portfolio. They plugged their own sites as examples. Unfortunately, they both use a third-party service like Squarespace and Adobe Portfolio.

One of the two hosts stated that designers don’t need to design and code their portfolio because it is a waste of time.  Services like Squarespace already have well-designed templates with homogenized elements.

No wonder sites, particularly web portfolios, look so much the same these days. With these services available at their finger tips, have designers given up creating and coding their own site these days? If that’s the case than it is a shame. 

When designers code their own site they have total control. Because they only use the markups and CSS properties they need, they can easily optimize their site for fast performance. Furthermore, they can demonstrate their coding skills to potential employers. I encourage designers to create their own site because  HTML and CSS aren’t hard to learn and they give them tremendous power.