In the second half of the graduate seminar class, we ditched the textbook and picked up a real design project. Between myself and three other graduate students, we decided on making a marketing campaign to promote the MA & MFA degree at George Mason School of Art. Right now the school has one MFA and four MA students.

After many brainstorm sessions, we came up with a tagline: “Real World Design.” Here is the message we want to send out to potential students:

Here at Mason, our design programs are taught by and for real world professionals. People who eat, drink and live this stuff. From websites to environmental graphics to ad campaigns seen by millions, a Mason MA or MFA in Design means your portfolio will be filled with real world work. Because it’s not just a design degree. It’s your profession.

Once we had that down, we agreed that featuring recent graduate students would be the best strategy. So we picked out two students and created our campaign around them. After we came up with the branding (look and feel, typography and images), we split up the work. One student created the posters. One created the brochure. One created an email postcard. I was responsible for the landing page.

We presented the project to the dean of the School of Art and she immediately wanted to use the materials to promote the graduate program. I am so glad that we got to do a real world design project in our class. So if you’re a graphic design and looking to get a master, join us!

You’re turning one today my dear and you have lived through the one of toughest years of our lives yet. While life is rough, I am thankful to have you in my arms every night. Your presence keeps me going. Watching you sleep is the most peaceful moment of my day. Seeing you standing on your own feet has to be one of the greatest joys of my life.

It won’t be too long before you start to walk. You have started talking quite a bit already. You can tell the different between strangers and the ones you see everyday; however, you play with anyone who interacts to you. You still have a great appetite. Like me, you don’t turn down food. Feeding you is such a rewarding experience. I don’t have to force you. You just eat until you’re full. You have turned down baby food. At times we restrict you from a certain food to avoid allergies. Once we have a better idea of your tolerance, I promise you that you can have anything that we eat.

One thing I would love to see you change is to stop exploring everything with your mouth and tongue. Once you get over that, I’ll be more relaxed and let you roam free. For now we have to keep an eye on you at all time.

Happy birthday, love.

Thanh Thảo returns to the club once again. Her new release features one track that clocks over an hour of nothing but Nonstop heavy-hitting beats weaving together a handful of trendy, sugary, catchy, dated pop hits. What makes the album shines, however, is that the thumping, pounding productions work toward her advantage.

The magic wand behind the album is producer Bảo Lư. Not only he knows how to cover up Thanh Thảo’s flaws and limited range, he also transforms the banal tunes into something more creative. He manages to make Thanh Thảo sounds more convincing underneath the chaotic beats. Thanh Thảo is no longer just singing about her broken heart. She’s burying her soul inside the thunderous productions. She’s ready for revenge. Fuck you for breaking her heart. She’s going to show you what the fuck you’re missing out.

Although I am getting way too old for the club shit, Nonstop beats the fucking blue out of me.

Đức Tuấn bores me. His delivery is badly repetitive. He locks himself into the broadway singing style that isn’t doing him any good for Vietnamese music. Lời Tôi Ru Như Mơ, his latest offerring of Từ Công Phụng’s romantic ballads, meets the standard, but far from outstanding.

Once again Đức Tuấn invested top-notch arrangements, which have become his standard, for his album, but his singing has become quite predictable and mechanical. He treats each word with so much care and calculation that it takes away from the emotional essence. Even when he injects his soul into the songs, it feels calculated, which ended up sounding so fake. On “Tự Tình Mùa Xuân,” the simple romance is nowhere to be heard because the song has turned into a musical broadway soundtrack. On “Trên Tháng Ngày Đã Qua,” he is terribly off-key trying to make the song sounds new. The result is disruptive and extremely awkward.

With the exception of “Kiếp Dã Tràng,” Lời Tôi Ru Như Mơ has similar song selection to Tuấn Ngọc’s Giọt Lệ Cho Ngàn Sau. The caliber of Đức Tuấn’s, however, is nowhere near Tuấn Ngọc’s classic.

I am in a love-hate relationship with Hiền Thục. Love her when she covers Trịnh Công Sơn’s music and hate her for doing commercial pops. Her new release, 3:15 PM, falls under the latter. The opening track, “Yêu Là Sai,” sounds so damn Chinese from the arrangement to the melody. The second track, “Hẹn Lại Ngàn Sau,” is way too melodramatic.

Yet, I am not hating the album because Hiền Thục makes the songs believable. She’s quite mature in handling the lyrics. In “Đêm Lạnh,” for example, her voice comes through once I get past the annoying rap shit. Somehow that soft, fragile voice of her is so hypnotizing over the heavy, thumping bass in a r & b production. She also surprises the listeners when switching her vocals to mezzo-soprano.

I am probably done with 3:15 PM by the time this review is written, but it whets my appetite until her next Trịnh’s songbook. Meanwhile young heads are putting this album on repeat.

The night the undertakers took grandpa to the funeral home, Dao was still up. He ran into my lap and asked, “Where are they taking grandpa?” It then struck me how should I tell a three year-old that his grandpa is gone forever. I replied to him, “Grandpa is going to a better place.” He pressed on, “Why?” I didn’t know what to say to him so I told him the truth, “Because he was sick and…” He interrupted, “The doctors take him away to make him feel better.” I replied, “Well, yes” and he said goodbye to grandpa.

The next day at dinner table, Dao asked his mom, “Mommy, grandpa is missing. He’s sick and the doctors took him away to make him feel better.” His innocent words put tears to all of us, especial his mom and grandma.

Dao had played a special role in grandpa’s heart. Dao was his first grandkid. Grandpa used to pick Dao up from daycare and he recognized how articulate this kid was by just talking to him. Of all the grands, Dao would be the only one that has the most memory of grandpa. We will certainly keep grandpa’s legacy alive.

May your soul rest in peace. Although we’re missing you madly, we know that you’re in a better place. The deadly lung cancer claimed your life, but not your spirit. I could see it in your eyes. You battled it to your last breath and I respect you deeply for that.

In fact, I had great respects for you even before we met. When I dated your little girl, she had always spoken highly of you. The first time she introduced me to you, I had nothing but admiration for a man who would be my father-in-law even though I almost blew my chance. By the way that I was holding the wrench, you knew that I had never done any fixing around the house. Not only you didn’t hold that against me, but you also took me under your wing. I still wish I had a tiny bit of your craftsmanship.

Thank you for being a loving father to me in the past few years. Life won’t be the same without you. I will miss those dinnertime moments when we rolled fried tilapia, sipped wine and chatted about Vietnamese culture. I loved our little discussions on music and lyrics. These last few days, Trịnh Công Sơn’s “Ở Trọ” reminded me of what you had explained to me. These lines have become clear to me: “Tôi nay ở trọ trần gian / Trăm năm về chốn xa xăm cuối trời.” You’re just leaving this temporary place and eventually we will see each other again.

Just wrapped up another project for my Advanced Typography class. I didn’t think I would like it, but the annual report turned out quite well. Accor was one of my selections, but I didn’t know why I picked it. Luckily it has many content I could work on. I focused on the sustainability theme and made it into a mini annual report. Here’s the original (PDF) and here’s my redesign version. Now I have three more projects for two classes to complete the semester.

In another update, I reworked my resume once again using san-serif typeface. I actually got a few calls from recruiters after the found my resume. Microformat seems to work well for findability. I encourage you to make a Microformat resume if you look for a job.

This morning, I had a flashback of Vanilla Ice while driving to work. The memory is vivid. It was recess time at elementary school playground. White girls were jumping ropes and singing: “Lay down and boogie and play that funky music til you die.” I was watching and cheering, “Go white girl, go white girl, go!”

A reader reminded me that I haven’t written a Vietnamese music review for a while. It’s true that I have been extremely busy and my focus had been on the election in the past couple of months. The real reason for the hiatus, however, is that I haven’t heard any Vietnamese album worth writing. I simply got tired of uninspiring pop formulas that polluted the airwave and I also want to stray away from negative criticism. That way I can save my words and time on albums that truly deserve the praise, like Thu Phương’s Hà Nội và Tôi.

Although the concept of Hà Nội has recorded numerous of times including Hồng Nhung’s classic Đoản Khúc Thu Hà Nội, Thu Phương is capable of carrying her own emotion and memories of Hà Nội. From the title track to “Hà Nội Ngày Tháng Cũ” (Song Ngọc), “Hà Nội Ngày Trở Về” (Phú Quang), “Hà Nội Mùa Vắng Những Cơn Mưa” (Trương Quý Hải & Bùi Thanh Tuấn) to “Hướng Về Hà Nội” (Hoàng Dương), Thu Phương has the city locked down. Every corner, every street and every scent come to life in her introspection.

Yet the most personal to Thu Phương has to be “Mong Về Hà Nội” (Hoàng Dương), in which listeners can feel the yearning of childhood when she sings, “Tôi mong về Hà Nội / Tìm lại tiếng ve ngày trẻ dại.” While the bossa-nova flavor gives Trịnh Công Sơn’s “Nhớ Mùa Thu Hà Nội” a fresh new vibe, I wish she stays with the piano solo in the intro throughout the song. The simplicity is just too damn captivating. The only throwaway track is Nhật Trung’s “Tìm Về Phố Xưa,” which samples the bass lines of The Police “Every Breath You Take.” Thu Phương probably throws Nhật Trung a bone for his arrangements on the album.

With Hà Nội và Tôi, Thu Phương once again demonstrates the craft of album concept and the art of storytelling. Unlike her peers, she has yet to let the bar down and for that she remains one of my favorite Vietnamese artists.

On album design: While the music is high-quality, the CD design is horrendous. Tiến Dũng (DT Media) definitely needs to take typography 101. Setting script typeface on a busy background is embarrassing. The text is so hard to read that he has to put heavy drop-shadow on the type. Even with the text-background, the script type is still not readable. He broke major rules of typography: readability, legibility and widow.