Ruari McLean’s collection of essays in Typographers on Type read like chefs sharing their favorite recipes and cooking process. From William Morris’s “Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press” (1895) to Matthew Carter’s “Now We Have Mutable Type” (1990), McLean has done an excellent job of assembling the pieces in chronological order, supplying short introduction for each essay, and providing useful information and development of typography in the 20th century. The book is set in FF Quadraatt, which is beautiful and easy to to read.

Dear Donny,
I am Bạch Yến. Today, I stumbled onto your blog at visualgui.com and read with great interest your comments on my new CD “Bạch Yến hát Tình Ca Lam Phương.” Your writings show that you have very profound appreciation for the music of Việt Nam, and in particular, great affinity for the music of Lam Phương. I am touched by your very flattering remarks about my new CD, and would like to express my sincere thanks.
With best regards,
Bạch Yến

Thank you, Cô.

At 72, Bạch Yến shows no sign of deterioration in her vocals. Her breathtaking rendition of “Cho Em Quên Tuổi Ngọc,” a classic ballad Lam Phương penned about her, is a proof. She soars on the high register with deep emotion and effortlessness. The track, accompanied by elegant piano and string orchestration, is a perfect opening for Bạch Yến’s newest album, which is a superb recording of Lam Phương’s compositions.

Although Lam Phương’s music have been covered to death, Bạch Yến breathes fresh air into his ballads with her own interpretation. One of the outstanding reworks is turning the over-sentimental “Phút Cuối” into a swing number. Unlike all of the singers (including Bằng Kiều) who added more and more emphatics to the tune, she strips it down to the core. In her phrasing, she ends each bar right on the last word without any extra vocal stressing. By just giving the melody some space, like on “Duyên Kiếp,” she proves that you don’t have to be over dramatic to express sad lyrics. I am looking at you again, Bằng Kiều.

While “Chờ Anh” gets a savory Latin flavor, “Một Mình,” gets an introspective approach rather than reflective to close out the album. The man who has contributed priceless treasures to Vietnamese music deserves an album like this.

In the effort to rebrand Mason’s online presence, I designed a new WordPress theme for various School of Law’ network site based on Twenty Twelve. Why did I create a child theme and not a brand new theme? Even though Twenty Twelve is not perfect, it has all the built-in functions that meet many requirements from faculty, staff and students.

To get the design that I want, I stripped away the ornamental styles, fixed the spacing, and created a clean, simple theme. Chrome’s Developer Tools and SASS are my savior. I incorporated the new logo, typefaces (Minion Pro and Myriad Pro) and brand colors from Mason’s style guide.

I am using the Web Services Blog as a demo to show various stakeholders how the new design look and will help them to implement it.

Last week George Mason University launched its first comprehensive brand profile. After reading through its 96-page documentation, we revised the Mason Law site to comply with the Mason’s Brand. I crafted the new word according to the brand’s guideline. I changed the typography to Minion Pro and Myriad Pro to comply with Mason’s primary typefaces. The fonts are served via Typekit.

As of today Visualgui is no longer supporting legacy browsers, particularly Internet Explore 8 and below. The markups have been revised and to take advantage of the new HTML elements. Without providing support for older browsers the markups are much more simplified, but the main reason for the switching is to improve accessibility with ARIA roles.

After listening to Bruce Lawson talking about ARIA roles baked in HTML5 default elements on “The Web Ahead” (episode #74) with Jen Simmons, I was inspired to do my research on it. Even though I have already used ARIA roles a few years already, I have learned that I didn’t use them quite correctly. After some Googling, I found the documentation on “Using WAI-ARIA in HTML” from W3C to be very helpful, especially the recommendations table.

As much as I want to support legacy browsers, I ought to move forward. After all this is my personal site. It is a place that allowing me to experiment. So if you are using legacy browsers, I apologize that Visualgui might not render correctly. If you can, please consider upgrading your browser.

Another significant change is that the text on Visualgui is now powered by Typekit.

Carter, Twentieth Century Type Designers, (p.9):

Offending readers with distortions of the basic proportions of letters, or even attracting their notice with minor eccentricities of detail, creates a resistance not only to the type but to the message of which the type should be the faithful messenger.

Carter on well-designed type (p.187):

Finally, we should always remember that well-designed type is only the first step towards readable texts and handsome pages: bad setting and thoughtless layout can ruin the best-looking typeface. I hope that this account of the labours of some of the creators of type will increase the respect among users and consumers for these small miracles of art and skill.

Morison, First principles of typography (1930):

Type design moves at the pace of the most conservative reader. The good type designer therefore realises that, for a new fount to be successful, it has to be so good that only very few recognise its novelty. If readers do not notice the consummate reticence and rare discipline of a new type, it is probably a good letter. But if my friends think that the tail of my lower-case r or the lip of my lower-case e is rather jolly, you may know that the fount would have been better had neither been made.

Sebastian Carter’s short profile of prominent type designers starting from Frederic W. Goudy to Carol Twombly (the only female designer featured in the book) is a good overview to typography. Worth a read.

With the exclusion of “Nghìn Trùng Xa Cách” (Phạm Duy) and “Nghiệt Ngã” (Mai Thanh Sơn), Nguyễn Hồng Nhung’s new CD, Giờ Anh Ra Đi, is identical to her live show DVD Tình Yêu Tôi Hát. Asia’s repackaging production is so obvious. All the songs were pre-recorded. Tickets were sold to see Nguyễn Hồng Nhung, her guests and musicians faking out on stage. The DVD then released as a live show and the album is sold with a different title. Three revenue streams from just one source. Not bad marketing strategy at all.

If you don’t want to hear the clap box and watch Nguyễn Hồng Nhung’s lip-synching in her absolutely reprehensible fashion sense, the album is the better choice. Most cover tracks, including the duets with Nguyên Khang, Lâm Nhật Tiến, Quốc Khanh and Đan Nguyên, are enjoyable. Standout is her sensational rendition of Trầm Tử Thiêng’s “Chợt Nghĩ Về Hai Nơi.” Mai Thanh Sơn’s semi-classical arrangement is simply beautiful. Again he should focus more on his chops behind the scene than on the mic. His voice is way too thin and his singing is way too fragile, noticeably their duet on “Tình Yêu Tôi Hát.”

With “Giờ Anh Ra Đi” and “Sẽ Có Một Ngày,” she could easily handle Trúc Hồ’s romantic pop hits. Her version of Diệu Hương’s “Em Yêu Anh” is soaring and heart-rending. Not a bad album at all.