The market for type is growing. But there’s a lot we need to learn about supporting languages outside North America and Europe. TypeThursday with typographer Donny Truong on the lack of support for Vietnamese in typefaces and how we can improve the situation.

Speaking with Thomas Jockin

The precision and clarify of your points are really visible on Vietnamese Typography. I get the impression you ran into frustrations in your life that would novitiate you to make such a resource. Is that a fair assessment?

Yes, that is a fair assessment. As a designer with a passion for typography and a love for my native language, I am frustrated with the lack of type choices for setting text in Vietnamese. As you already know, Vietnamese is based on the Latin alphabet. I am not 100% certain, but as far as I can tell, Vietnamese probably the only Eastern language that is not written in ideographs. So Vietnamese has been Romanized and most of its letters are the same as the Latin, how come most typefaces do not support its characters? That’s the question that motivated me to make the resource for Vietnamese Typography.

What sparked this interest in typography? Was there a particular moment that you remember?

Wow, your question gives me nostalgia. You know, I started building websites for a living in the early 2000s. At the time, I either set the text in Helvetica or Georgia and then moved to other things like web standards, images, colors, and user interactions. But because I was working at Vassar College at the time, I was fortunate to be surrounded by typographic experts, particularly Tim Brown who is now working at Typekit. Tim used to raved about The Elements of Typographic Style, but the book was way over my head. I was always interested in typography, but I did not delve deep into it until about three years ago when I started my job at the George Mason University School of Law.

I still remember a particular moment when I stood in front of the vast collection of typographic books in the Mason library. It felt like I founded a treasure. I started to read as much as I could and soaked up as I possibly could. Although most of the books I read were for print, I applied many of the principles for the web and they served me well. As for the The Elements of Typographic Style, I think I read it six or seven times now and I always find something intriguing every time I read it.

A lot of people have a hard time with Elements of Typographic Style! Especially at the beginning of their interest in typography. What changed in your typographic knowledge between taking the course with Tim Brown and being at George Mason University?

To clarify: I worked with Tim, but never took a course with him. I wish I did. Reading the rich history of type and its vibrant transformation in the last 500 years completely changed my typographic knowledge. In addition to Robert Bringhurst, I owe my knowledge to writers like Alexander Lawson for his classic Anatomy of a Typeface, Erik Spiekermann for his enlightening Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works, Sofie Beier whose book Reading Letters taught me about legibility and readability, Karen Chang for her amazing details in Designing Type, Jost Hochuli for his concise yet rich Detail in Typography. I could go on and on, but if anyone is interested in typographic books, I have a long list on my web site. Come check them out.

What is the most common mistake made by typeface designers in developing support for Vietnamese?

One of the common mistakes I had seen so far is not making diacritical marks part of the font family. What I mean is that the marks are often way smaller than the base letters, especially the ones with the combined diacritics. For example, when a modified letter is combined with a tone mark, an acute, a grave, or a hook above gets so small that it becomes illegible at small size. The angle of the accents, especially on uppercase letters, get lower to avoid leading issues, but also ended up affecting legibility. There are some design challenges when adding Vietnamese support, but they can be resolved.

I have tremendous respect for Robert Slimbach and the Adobe Type Team for always making Vietnamese support part of their priorities. Most of the typefaces from Adobe are equipped with Vietnamese right from the start.

Unicode support of Vietnamese has existed since 2001. Now in 2015, you’ve written in Vietnamese Typography, a dearth of typefaces that cover the needed character sets. Why the delay? Do you hope your site will help advocate more support for Vietnamese?

I had this project in my mind for a while, but I thought that there has to be some kind of resources out there on Vietnamese typography. To my dismay, I could not find anything. So when it was time to do research for my thesis for my MA in Graphic Design at George Mason University School of Art, I knew I had to tackle this challenge.

For the second part of your question, it is my goal to help advocate more support for Vietnamese. If you look at Typekit, there’s only about 20 out of thousands of typefaces have support for Vietnamese. Google Fonts has only a handful out of hundreds. Last year I attended the Typographics conference in New York and asked Jonathan Hoefler if any of his typefaces support Vietnamese and his answer was none.

Since the day I launched vietnamesetypography.com, a few type designers had reached to me and they had shown interest in making Vietnamese support for their existing typefaces. I am more than happy to help out or review their fonts.

Would it be fair to summarize your dismay about the lack of support of Vietnamese is because of the limited range of typographic expression currently possible?

Yes, that is correct. If you look at online publications written in Vietnamese, most of the texts are still set in default system fonts. Last year, I noticed some Vietnamese articles posted on Medium. At that time, Medium didn’t even have support for Vietnamese characters; therefore, the text looked pretty funky. Their custom typefaces didn’t have the proper Vietnamese subsetting. As a result, the browsers just picked up whatever system fonts that have diacritical marks and combined the two. Imagine the base letters set in Goudy, but all the critical marks set in Georgia or Times New Roman.

As far as the limited range of typographic expression in Vietnamese, it also has to do with the lack of awareness from the Vietnamese people. I don’t think they pay much attention to typography. As long as they can read the text, they are not concerned if the type is good or the diacritics are legible. In my research, I found inconsistencies in the position of the tone marks when combined with the modified letters, but they don’t seem to bother Vietnamese readers. Furthermore, it might be a cultural thing. You can find tons of Vietnamese doctors and engineers, but not much in the creative profession. I could only track down one type designer for my book. So, in addition to reach out to type designers with my project, I want to raise awareness of typography in the Vietnamese community. On one hand, I want to help type designers make typefaces with Vietnamese support. On the other hand, I hope to get the conversation started on Vietnamese typography.

That’s an ambitious mission! I love it. How can TypeThursday readers help you with Vietnamese Typography’s mission?

Yes, it is an ambitious mission, and this is just the beginning. I have been receiving valuable feedback from type designers; therefore, I am planning on expanding it in the future. My goal is to get it out there and see if people are interested in it. They have responded.

TypeThursday readers can help me out by reading it, sending me their thoughts on how I can improve it, and sharing it to type designers. And thank you, Thomas, for giving me the opportunity to talk about Vietnamese Typography. It will definitely help getting the word out.

Want to help Vietnamese Typography’s mission? Check out the site and share it on social media.

This interview is originally posted on Medium.

I am sad and disheartened to learn that you had left this world. How could a kindhearted man like you lost his life to a heart complication? Life is just unfair. You were truly one of the most loving husbands and fathers I have known. You opened up your heart to me and placed your trust in me. I wanted to apologize to you that I couldn’t accomplish what you had asked me to do. As much as I wanted things to work out, the situation was beyond my control. Regardless of what happened I have nothing but respect for you. Rest in peace, sir.

Sass is a powerful CSS pre-processor. I don’t use every feature Sass offers. I only use the ones that speed up my CSS workflow.

// Sass command line
sass --watch /location/style.scss: /location/style.css --style compressed

// comment
/*!This comment will be in the compiled CSS even when compressed.*/

// import
@import “normalize”;

// Variables
$body_text: Helvetica , Arial, sans-serif;

// Variable inside variable
$highlight-color: #000;
$highlight-border: 1px $hightlight-color solid;
.select {border: $highlight-border;}

// Parent reference with &
article a {color: blue;
&:hover {color:red;} }

// Nested group
.container {h1, h2, h3 {margin: 1em;} }

// Extend
.error {color:red;}
.seriousError {@extend .error;
font-weight: bold; }

// Placeholder
%dark {color: #fff; background: #000;}
.button {@extend %dark;}

// Function to covert px to em
@function calc-em($target-px, $context) {
@return ($target-px / $context) * 1em;}
h1 {font-size: calc-em(30px, 16px);

// Operators
.container { width: 100%; }
.main {float: left; width: 600px / 960px * 100%;}

// Map control directive
$map: (twitter: “twitter.png”, facebook: “facebook.png“);
@each $network, $image in $map {.icon-#{$network} {
background: image-url(“icons/#{$image}"); }}

From fundamental concepts to branding process to case studies, Alina Wheeler’s Designing Brand Identity is a quick yet comprehensive guide on building a brand. This is a required reading for my class on Brand Identity Design, which only started two weeks ago, and I already plowed through it. The Fourth Edition has many up-to-date information such as new best practices. Without a doubt, this is a book to keep as a reference for designers and Marissa Mayer should have read it as well.

My mother’s oldest sister passed away this morning after a long suffering caused by a severe stroke fifteen years ago. Since then she had been paralyzed and spent most of her time in bed. Not only she had never recovered from the stroke, her condition was getting worse and worse. The last time I saw her, which was two weeks ago, she could barely sit in the wheelchair. The only way to communicate to her was when she blinked her teary eyes to let me know that she understood what I said.

Before the stroke, auntie 2 was a strong woman with a business mind. After migrating to the States, she rebuilt her business from nothing. She started out making bean sprouts. Then she owned a small Asian grocery store. Then she owned a Chinese restaurant with a full bar and liquor store. On the second level of the restaurant, she converted the building into small apartments. We lived in one of those apartments for several years when we first moved to the States.

As the head of the household, auntie 2 led her children into building a successful family business. Although the business was growing, she did almost everything herself. She still planted her own bean sprouts. She made hundreds and hundreds of egg rolls and wontons almost every night. Whenever I was bored in my apartment, I would come down to lend her a hand and she would tell me stories about how she helped my grandfather with the family business in Viet Nam and taught herself business skills. Those stories always inspired me.

Auntie 2 was also a great cook. She used to make killer Kimchee, bún riêu (crab noodle soup) and my personal favorite canh mồng tơi (malabar nightshade soup). The sweet combination of home-grown mồng tơi (malabar nightshade), mướp (luffa) and corn made the soup delightful. Just thinking of canh mồng tơi makes me miss and love her so much.

Even though her children, specially chị Phương and chị Hoa Nhỏ, had done an extraordinary job of taking care of auntie 2 all these years, it was heartbreaking to see her lived in a deteriorating condition. Leaving behind all the tubes, machines, pain and suffering seems to be better for her. Auntie 2’s spirit is now truly free. May her soul rest in peace.

My mother’s 8th sister passed away yesterday at the age of 65. She was another victim of cancer. Only two months ago that she found out she had stage-four breast cancer. The diagnose came too late. The cancer cells were already taken over her liver.

Less than two weeks ago when American oncologists recommended hospice, her husband took her to Mexico for an alternative treatment. Unfortunately, that method didn’t work. On her way back to the States, she was admitted to the hospital in San Diego because she couldn’t breathe and that was where she drew her last breath.

In my mother’s family, auntie 8 was the first one to migrate to the States. She then filed all the paperworks and found sponsors for the rest of the family members. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be here today. That is something I would never forget.

Goodbye auntie 8. May your soul rest in peace.

Five years ago, I left the lovely Poughkeepsie, New York and followed my heart to the Metro Area. Then I married the woman I love. Just like that and half a decade had passed.

We stood the test of time. We had gone through ups and downs. We have our differences, but we compromise. We’re not perfect, but we embrace our imperfection. We work hard everyday to build our lives together.

In retrospect, the past five years had changed our lives forever. I am grateful everyday that she had given me two beloved boys. The journey to parenthood has just only begun. The road ahead of us is still rough and unpredictable. We will have many challenges waiting for us, but we would pull through if we hold on tight. Love will conquer and unite us all.

Happy five-year anniversary. Thank you for all the love, laugh, sacrifice and support.

Miles Davis opened up my ears and introduced me to the world of jazz and fusion. Beyond music appreciation, he changed the way I approach my professional work. While Davis, who reinvented jazz at least five times, was constantly changing his musical direction, he was also refining and redefining his sound. His choices of notes were thoughtful and his phrasings were meaningful. The notes he left out were as essentials as the notes he played.

As I listened to Davis’s albums, particularly his quintessential Kind of Blue, I began to change my design approach. For example, Davis’s improvisations in “So What,” “Freddie Freeloader” and “All Blues” were complete opposite from John Coltrane’s and Cannonball Adderley’s. Whereas Coltrane and Adderley played swift, blazing solos, Davis played only the most telling notes. In a similar way, I began to see important elements emerged in my design as I stripped away decorative ones. I came to realize that design was not only what I put in, but also what I left out.

While the process sounds easy, it took me tremendous amount of time and decision to accomplish. In many occasions, I keep turning on and off layers in Photoshop, Illustrator or even Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to figure out whether I should leave in or take out a certain elements without over-simplifying the design. Coltrane had similar problem in his early career. He was having a hard time finding the right place to end his solos; therefore, he sought Davis for advice. Davis suggested, “Take the horn out of your mouth.”

In addition to being one of the world greatest trumpet players, Davis was also a master of communication. The recording of “Autumn Leaves” (with Adderley as the leader) is a brilliant example of Davis’s power of precision and command. After a brief intro from the quintet, which included Hank Jones on piano, Art Blakey on drums and Sam Jones on bass, Davis cut straight to the melodic core. Each note he played on his muted trumpet struck the emotional cords: brooding, melancholy and hauntingly clear. In my own work, I explore emotional design through the practice of selection and the art of reduction. Whether working with colors, types, or images, I would choose the ones that give the most emotional value to my design. I have also learned to cut out the non-essential parts and applied more detail to essence.

Using space, another design-related element, was one of the techniques Davis had acquired in his early career. With the rise of bebop in the 1950s, every jazz musician at the time wanted to play like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. They filled in as many notes as they could into their improvisation. In contrast, Davis left plenty of space in his phrasing. As a result, he let his melodic lines breathe and gave listeners a chance to absorb his music.

When I first started doing creative work, I crammed as much elements as I could into my design. My first web page was filled with at least four different typefaces, animated GIFs (Graphical Interchangeable Format) and unrelated colors. Later on, I learned the concept of using space to make the key message stronger through one of Davis’s fusion albums titled Bitches Brew. In exploring the jazz-rock territory, Davis gave his rhythm section, which was made up of four drummers, three electric keyboardists and two bassists, the freedom to work out its chaotic, organic groove. He only came in to play when he had something to say. Every time he blew his horn, however, he created the order out of the disorder. Likewise, my responsibility as a designer is to take the client contents and organize them into a logical sense. While Davis had demonstrated that space in music creates harmony and balance, white space in web design can also create harmonious layouts and free the eye from clutter. The correct use of white space not only brings out the content, but also enhances readability and legibility.

In his late career, Davis experimented with funk, rock, electric, pre-recorded orchestration and even hip-hop backbeat. The way he played opened my ears once again on the art of adaptation. Because he was such a versatile and flexible trumpeter, Davis was able to response and adapt to any musical backdrop. For instance, he was skillfully maneuvered his way around the pre-recorded arrangements in Tutu. In the hand of another musician, Tutu might sound like lightweight background music, but Davis made it into “a work of engrossingly fraught atmospheres,” as critic Kevin Le Gendre put it.

With the rise of smartphones, tablets and various digital devices, a designer must embrace the fluidity of the web. I learned to let go of the fixed design and abandon making mockups in Photoshop. I took on the challenge of designing web site where it actually lives. Designing in the browser feels much more natural once I get past the technicality. Davis once said, “The way you change and help music is by tryin’ to invent new ways to play.” I keep his words in mind whenever I need to learn and adapt to new technologies in the fast-changing paste of web design and development.

Written for Advanced Web Design class at George Mason University School of Art.

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.

The first time I heard Ngọc Lan’s voice, I flipped the fuck out. Huỳnh Anh’s “Rừng Lá Thay Chưa” had been covered before, but never with such elegant, effervescent, emotional touch Ngọc Lan brought to it. It was love at first sound. I fell for her angelic alto immediately. I was in awed with the effortlessness she maneuvered her way around the rumba rhythm.

A couple of days ago, I came across a CD of Ngọc Lan’s recordings I made for myself ages ago so I could bring with me on roadtrips. Upon re-listening to the collection, I realized that my personal favorites were arranged in rumba. Ngọc Lan was a versatile vocalist who covered a wide range of styles, including Vietnamese lyrical songs, translated love melodies, ballroom-dance tunes, and French romantic ballads, but my personal preference has to be the rumba flavor simply because she had the flow.

I can listen to “Chuyện Phim Buồn,” “Yêu Đến Muôn Đời,” and “Dòng Sông Quê Tôi” again and again just to hear her soft, sweet, and sensual voice floating like crystal clear water over the hypnotic Latin rhythm arranged by Quang Nhật. With “Chuyện Phim Buồn,” in which Phạm Duy translated into Vietnamese from Sue Thompson’s “Sad Movies (Make Me Cry),” Ngọc Lan sang like she was the main character in the film. One could hear the sadness of betrayal from a lover as well as the clever cover up of emotion when her mother asked her why she was sad: “Dối má tối nay rằng / Đã lỡ trót xem phim buồn / Và xem đúng ngay một phim thật đỗi buồn / Làm lòng con xót xa.” (“And mama saw the tears and said ‘what’s wrong?’ / And so to keep from telling her a lie / I just said ‘sad movies make me cry’”). As for “Dòng Sông Quê Tôi” I didn’t realize the song was translated from “La Playa” until I searched it up. The Vietnamese lyrics, again masterfully translated by Phạm Duy, fit the harmony so well that I thought it was a true Vietnamese ballad. No less impressive was “Yêu Đến Muôn Đời,” which was also a foreign ballad translated by Trung Hành.

Another outstanding rumba recording was “Giáng Tiên Nữ,” which based on the theme of “Black Orpheus,” with Vietnamese lyrics written by Phạm Duy. Again the flow was just impeccable, as she brought some sensuality to the lyrics: “Vùi trong hơi ấm nồng nàn / Thịt da thơm ngát tình nồng / Cùng chăn gối ấm tình hồng / tình ôi ngất ngây.” (I am not even going to attempt to translate.)

Ngọc Lan’s rendition of Lam Phương’s “Xin Thời Gian Qua Mau” is still one of the best interpretations I’ve heard. The heart-rending saxophone, the crisp snare drum, and Ngọc Lan’s swag made the tune so damn intimate. I could almost feel her breath as if she were singing into my ears: “Ta đã quen, quen từng hơi thở / Quen tiếng cười và sóng mát đưa tin / Tám mùa đông cây rừng khô trụi lá / Chưa bao giờ một phút sống xa nhau.”

How did Ngọc Lan sing the rumba so damn good? She embraced the rumba, caressed the rumba, and made lucious love to the rumba.

Updated June 23, 2022