Tuần trước khi nhận được message của chị Quyên báo gia đình chị qua DC chơi, tôi vui vì có cơ hội gặp được người chị tôi kính mến từ lâu. Lúc xưa khi có vấn đề tình cảm, tôi thường thổ lộ trên blog thì chị gửi email đến động viên. Lúc mới làm cha tôi bỡ ngỡ những lúc con bệnh tôi viết trên blog và chị đã chia sẽ những kinh nghiệm đã từng trải. Từ những email đó tôi đã xem chị ấy như một người chị ở xa.

Thứ bảy vừa qua tuy gặp nhau lần đầu nhưng dường như tôi đã quen chị từ lâu. Hai cháu tôi cũng nhận ra qua hình ảnh tuy ngoài đời hai cháu đã lớn. Chồng chị cũng vui vẻ cởi mở. Hai gia đình coi như có duyên với nhau. Tôi và bà xã không giao thiệp rộng. Bà xã thì còn có vài người bạn từ đại học. Còn tôi thì chẵng còn liên lạc với bạn bè nào. Tôi thường trêu bà xã là hai đứa mình chẵng có gì giống nhau cả ngoài cái cô đơn. Thôi thì ngoài cái vợ chồng hai đưa mình làm bạn nhau luôn cho đỡ hiu quạnh.

Chiều đó tôi gặp gia đình chị Trâm và chị Nga, hai người bạn của chị Quyên. Hai ông chồng Mỹ cũng rất tử tế. Chúng tôi ngồi trò chuyện, lai rai vài chai bia và thưởng thức bánh xèo ba chị đã làm. Chị Trâm cũng ở Virginia nên chúng tôi sẽ có dịp qua lại thường xuyên. Mấy đứa con của chị cũng cở tuổi thằng Đạo và Đán nên tôi nó chơi với nhau.

Tuy chỉ gặp mặt vài tiếng đồng hồ nhưng đối với tôi thì rất quý báo. Vì tình bạn qua mạng vẫn có thể thân thiết.

Updated my Amazon Wish List because my birthday is coming up and just in case you want to give me some presents. All the books are on typography. I already own a handful of them. I guess I am trying to build my own little library on typography.

This morning Đán ran to me and cried, “Daddy, Đạo scratched me and pushed me.” Then he turned authoritative and ordered me, “Hit him.” I couldn’t help smiling, but told him that we don’t hit each other. We have to be nice to each other.

The weather is turning nice; therefore, Đán is allowed to play at the playground each morning. He hasn’t been crying for the past few days when I dropped him off. He’s eager to see his favorite teacher, Ms. Ali.

Đạo got in trouble again yesterday. His teacher complained that he didn’t want to share with his friend. They both fought over a car. His teacher told him to play with another car that is exactly the same, but he just wanted that particular car he was fighting for. When I asked him what happened and he told me that he had the car first.

At home he does the same thing with Đán. He wants whatever Đán has on his hand. It drives me crazy because they have tons of toys, but he only wanted that particular toy at the moment. I gave him timeout and explained to him that is not OK to do that, but it just goes in one ear and out the other.

Đán woke up in the morning, smiled and said, “Daddy địt.” I replied, “Đán địt.” He sounded a bit angry, “No, daddy địt.” I teased on, “No, Đán địt.” He got real mad, pointed at me and said, “No, I tell you. Daddy địt.” I responded, “OK, Daddy địt.” I did.

Yesterday with Đạo

Đạo played with his legos and pretended: “Bad guys going into Walmart.” I was curious to know: “Why do bad guys go to Walmart? They want to buy some toys?” He responded, “No, to take some money.” I was like, “What? Where did you learn that from?” He said, “From Eric.”

Đạo’s 5th birthday is coming up and he has been quite misbehaving at school. On Monday, he refused to return to class after being in the playground. He did fine on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I asked him what happened in class. He said that two of his friends called him “dirty head.” I said, “That’s not nice so what did you do?” He responded, “I punched them.” I was like, “Oh no. What hands are for?” He replied, “To hold hands and to eat food.” I said, “That’s good. Why didn’t tell your teachers what they said to you?” He responded, “I did.” I asked, “What did your teacher say?” He replied, “She said to tell my friends ‘no, thank you. I don’t like what you said.'” I said, “That’s good advice. Why didn’t you do that?” He said,” I don’t know.”

I made a deal with him that we would throw him a big birthday party for him if he would be a good boy from today to the 25th. Each day we would put a smiley face sticker on the calendar if he would be good in school. The school’s psychologist thinks that he’s acting up because he knows his birthday is coming up. She wanted to meet with us and his teachers again to discuss his behavior.

I have been following Eric’s blog on his daughter’s battling with brain cancer. Each update made my heart sank. Last night I was completely shattered when I read the latest post:

She had known ever since the tumors returned. She had expressed her fear in a few whispers, soothed by our reassurances that we were still looking for special medicine, and now she knew we were telling her she was going to die. She knew, and was terrified, curving her small body into a ball surrounding her pain as we tried to make a shield of our arms, futilely trying to protect her when the killer and the pain were already inside the shield. Inside her, where nobody could get it out. So our arms and bodies instead became a blanket inside which she could mourn her own life and try to cope with her terror of going away forever.

I refreshed my business card for my graduate course on professional design practices. I wanted to go into the Swiss direction because I have been doing a bit of reading about it. I submitted several conventional versions and threw in this one to see if it stood out. The professor liked it and I did as well. I always loved playing with big and tall typeface; therefore, League Gothic was a perfect choice for the name. As much as I wanted to stick with the same typeface for the entire card, League Gothic didn’t work well at small size; therefore, I substitute Univers for the rest of the information. I am going to print out about 100 copies and keep them for bookmarks. Who uses printed business card nowadays.

Hi, I am Donny and I run a small web studio called Visualgui.com.

Five years ago, a fiction writer named Kristin Bair O’Keeffe contacted me and asked if I would be interested in creating a web site to promote her upcoming first novel titled Thirsty. I jumped to the opportunity because it sounded like a fantastic project.

Before I even started to think about the design, I asked Kristin if I could read the novel first. She sent me the entire unedited manuscript. I read the whole book and it gave me everything I needed to design the site.

The story is about a Croatian woman who fell in love with an American. After they got married, she migrated to a steel town in Pittsburg where her husband lived and worked. He turned out to an abusive husband. It’s a dark, powerful and hopeful novel and I wanted to convey those elements right on the homepage.

Out of all if the images Kristin sent me, I chose the steel plant for the background. For the title of the book, I selected Baskerville, which is a transitional typeface to signify the woman’s transition from Croatia to America. The image of the butterfly, which suggested hope, was used throughout the book; therefore, I incorporated it into the design as well. For the secondary pages, I kept the dark header, but reverted the main content area to white for readability.

I mocked up a homepage, a secondary page and shared with Kristin my design process and she loved it immediately.

One of the things that I loved working with Kristin was that she cared deeply about her content. She had almost everything together before she even contacted me.

Once we launched the site, she asked me if I wanted to make a trailer for the book. With the storyboard she wrote and a musical score her friend created, I put together a short clip using Flash.

In a coincidence, her second novel, The Art of Floating, is also released today and she contacted me several months ago to create and landing page for it. I gave the page a responsive design to be displayed on multiple devices. Go check it out and get the book.

Evans and Thomas’s comprehensive textbook explains the core principles of design. In addition to learning the basics of typography, color and imagery, the book touched upon design management, research and portfolio presentation. Definitely a must-read for anyone who is starting out with graphic design even if you’re not a student.

Late last year, Dinh Cuong’s son who I worked with on his dad’s web site referred me to a local Vietnamese client on a web development job. The guy would design the site in Photoshop and hand the mockups over to me to develop in HTML, CSS and content management system. This is not an ideal position because it is very hard to code someone else’s design, especially of the design has no web experience.

I knew the challenge of taking on the gig, but it’s a fairly small project and I wanted to use the opportunity to learn a new database-free CMS. As I had expected, the designer wanted me to code up exactly like he designed in Photoshop. He thought of it as a print piece and put no consideration into user experience. The navigation, which is the most important element of a web site, weren’t available until the users get through three clicks. I had to meet with him to go over why his design wouldn’t work for the web. He had some resistance at first, but willing to compromise.

The first time I met at his town house, the place was very nice. His deck is facing a small pond. You can walk into a deck and put your feet into the water. Inside his house, he has minimal decoration, very Japanese inspired. The second time I met with him again to show some of the design I modified to be more user friendly, but he insisted that he still wanted the homepage to be just a paragraph of texts and nothing else, sort of like a splash page.

When I arrived at his place for the second time, the entire place was a huge mess. He had things all over the place. One of the pipes in his basement busted. The meeting didn’t went too well. I was going to have sign up for domain name and hosting, but I thought we should wait.

A few days later, which was early February, I sent him two new mockups in HTML and I stayed as close to his design as I could. I only changed a few details to make the site responsive. He hadn’t responded back to me even though the pages looked very closed to his designs. I reminded him, but he said that he was dealing with the basement and I completely understand.

With school projects and work, I temporarily checked out of the project until he comes back to me. The momentum is definitely lost, but I’ll pick it back up again. Since I won’t be responsible for the contents, I’ll get the site into the CMS and hand it over. I am not sure when that time will come. He does have legitimate reason with the basement.

My last project with another Vietnamese didn’t go too well either. I ended up cancelled the project after many months stalling and without responses after several reminders. I felt that her heart was not into it since she didn’t paid for it and I didn’t want to waste our time and her friend’s money.

Left my project folder at the Copy Center. The lady called me to let me know. I came to pick up the folder and left my iPhone. I came back and she already handed over to the police. The combination of way too much coffee and lacking of sleep is making me lose my mind. I need to get home and crash. Next week is going to be even more hectic.