After my freshman year at La Salle University, I decided to change my major from communications to digital arts. I found out that I didn’t like public speaking; therefore, I wanted my arts to speak for me.

I checked the University of the Arts website and was impressed with its programs and students’ projects. I wanted to apply, but then I decided to stay at La Salle when some faculty members informed me that La Salle would have a brand new program called Digital Arts & Multimedia Design next year.

I just learned that UArts will close on Friday, June 7. The abrupt closure is devastating, especially for the current students. Fortunately La Salle offers personalized transfer plan for all University of the Arts students. The digital arts program at La Salle has come a long way. As one of first graduates in the DArts program 23 years ago, I am doing fine in the field I studied.

George Washington University School of Nursing is hiring a Web Lead. This position is fully remote. The pay is OK ($57,553.66 – $79,165.63), but the tuition benefit is great.

Out of curiosity, I flipped through Trí C. Trần’s Essential Vietnamese Grammar to see what he teaches English speakers our language. Then I came across his translation of Vietnamese proverbs sprinkled throughout the book. I collected them here:

Sông sâu còn có kẻ dò, Nào ai lấy thước mà đo lòng người. (Even a deep river can be fathomed by somebody, but no one could ever use a yardstick to measure the depth of the human heart.)

Uống nước nhớ nguồn (When drinking water (from a brook), you should think of where the source begins.)

Ăn trầu thì phải có vôi, Cúng rằm thì phải có xôi có chè. (Areca nuts must be chewed together with slaked lime; mid-month offerings must include sticky rice and desserts.)

Vụng múa chê đất lệch. (An unskilled dancer often blames the ground for being uneven.)

Cha mẹ nuôi con biển hồ lai láng, Con nuôi cha mẹ tính tháng tính ngày. (How much parents nourish and nurture their children is as endless as oceans and lakes, while the children calculate days and months when it’s their turn to take care of their parents.)

Ăn lấy chắc, mặc lấy bền. (Eat solid food and wear durable clothing.)

Được bữa giỗ, lỗ buổi cày. (Going to a death anniversary banquet means losing a plow day.)

Giàu thú quê không bằng ngồi lê kẻ chợ. (A wealthy person in the countryside cannot compare with one hanging around in the city.)

Trông trời cho chóng gió đông, Cho thuyền được gió, cho nhông tôi về. (I hope that the east wind will soon blow, so all the boats will sail along with it and my husband will come home.)

Thương nhau mấy núi cũng trèo, Mấy sông cũng lội, mấy đèo cũng qua. (One would climb any mountain, cross any pass and swim in any river to be with their lover.)

Trong đầm gì đẹp bằng sen, Gần bùn mà chẳng hôi tanh mùi bùn. (What other flowers are more beautiful than the lotuses in the marsh Which grow near the mud but are still good smelling?)

Ra đồng gặp vịt thì lùa, Gặp cướp thì đánh, gặp chùa thì tu. (If you happen to see a flock of ducks out in the fields, herd them; if you bump into some robbers, fight them; and if you find a temple, become a monk there.)

Bán anh em xa, mua láng giềng gần. (Sell your faraway siblings to buy some nearby neighbors.)

A handyman who did a shitty job on hooking up the bathroom-fan pipe charged $150. An HVAC technician inspected the HVAC systems charged $235. A Toyota dealer charged $1,245 to fix an airbag issue. A CMS maker charged almost $200,000 to migrate a website. Meanwhile, I make jack shit.

From fixing shit around the house and fixing the cars to paying for the kids’ tutor, piano lessons, and other activities, we spent money like it is going to rot. We might need to spend $15,000 on the new HVAC systems. The cars give me so much damn headache, but I can’t get rid of them. The house is deteriorating. My wife has always wanted to remodel the kitchen, but I just don’t justify dropping $30,000 to $50,000. Our car has been at the dealer since last Tuesday. I hope they will not charge us for what they didn’t do correctly the first time. We already dropped $1,245.

Just thinking about all this shit is stressing me the fuck out. My wife said to me, “Why are you always tired?” Because I have to deal with all of this shit so she doesn’t have to. I don’t even get the support from the person closest to me.

I just happened to come across the Georgia Tech logos. The interlocking GT looks similar to the connecting GM from the George Mason logos. GT refreshed its brand in 2021. GM refreshed its brand last month. New trend?

I made an arrangement with Mr. Điệp Trần to service our HVAC unit after he fixed the outside unit last November. Instead he inspected the units and pumped about 2 pounds of refrigerants. He charged me $235.

Our Trane systems are 16 years old. The inside unit is getting moldy. He recommends replacing both units and add UV lights to prevent mold. We’re looking at $15,000. Damn!

I am not sure if we should go ahead and drop $15,000 for a peace of mind or just ride the current systems until they die out. My wife and I still have some time to think about it.

I love typography. I prefer licensing new fonts over buying new clothes. I hardly wear new clothes, but I dress my websites in crisp, new typefaces whenever I can.

Yesterday, I typeset my personal blog in Job Clarendon, designed by Bethany Heck and David Jonathan Ross. It was the first time I used a slab-serif typeface for text. Since Job Clarendon Text, which David sent out a couple of weeks ago to his Font of the Month Club members, has a slightly lighter weight, I increased the font size for readability. Then again, I’ve always wanted the text on my blog to be a bit larger by default.

For the blog titles and headings, I used the variable display version of Job Clarendon. To keep the typographic system in the same family, I used Input Mono, also designed by David, for the dates and code samples. I hope you will enjoy reading my old blog in the new text face.

The main text for my blog was set in Euchre, designed by Jackson Showalter-Cavanaugh. I would like to use Euchre for my professional portfolio site, but I didn’t want to use the same typeface on both places. After switching my blog to Job Clarendon, I could use Euchre for my portfolio. Since Euchre is a sans-serif text face, I needed a serif display face to complement it. I ended up with Aneto, designed by Veronika Burian, José Scaglione, Azza Alameddine, and Roxane Gataud.

To showcase my UX design, I was searching for a beautiful, readable sans-serif text face and Euchre fulfilled my needs. I could have used Inter, but I wanted to stand out, not in. I am not knocking Inter. In fact, I give Rasmus Andersson tons of props for making Inter ubiquitous in the UX community, higher education, corporation, and everywhere else. As of this writing, Inter has been served 6.14 billion times through Google Fonts API just over the last week. Inter is featured in more than 1.20 million websites.

Let’s keep it real. Inter and many open source fonts are popular because they are free. It is insane to me that a website project could cost between $100,000 – $200,000, but we can’t license a commercial font family. As a designer, I support small, independent type foundries. If I came across a typeface that I liked, I would license it without any hesitation if it had Vietnamese diacritics. My only requirement for choosing any typeface is the support for Vietnamese. Check out my growing list of typefaces that can set in English, Vietnamese, and many more languages.

Kris Sowersby writes about American Grotesk:

It is fantasy to hope that a typeface can undo the damage of an era that introduced the concept of fake news. One can only hope that truth centres itself over time, and isn’t destroyed in the maelstrom of the present. American Grotesk can’t turn back the post-truth tsunami, but can at least stand for the same honest values as Franklin Gothic.

American Grotesk supports over 200 languages, but not Vietnamese.

Berkeley didn’t go crazy like GM. Its wordmark has been updated for legibility while maintaining its connection to the Goudy typeface. For its typography, however, Berkeley opted for Inter and Source Serif, two open source typefaces. They should have licensed some commercial typefaces. Here’s a great list.

The unveil of George Mason new logo was bad, the rollout gets worse. Its typography is all over the place.

Acumin Pro and Kandal are for printing. Figtree, Open Sans, and Noto Serif are for the web. Poppins and Noto Serif are for Canva. Franklin Gothic and Cambria are for Microsoft Office. Why do we need two sans-serif faces (Figtree and Open Sans) for the web? Why not just two typefaces (Acumin Pro and Kandal) across all platforms?

What a mess.