A brief HISTORY of VIETNAMESE WRITING – Section 5

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Donny Trương¹
School of Art at George Mason University

… be continued for section 4:

CONCLUSION

    With this book, I want to make sure that I have covered enough useful information such as historical background, typographical details, and design challenges to encourage designers to expand their typefaces beyond the basic Latin alphabet. I also hope to motivate them to incorporate Vietnamese early in their design process rather than an afterthought.

    As demonstrated throughout this book, the design of the diacritics must be consistent with the design of the whole font system. Designing them together ensures the unity of a multilingual family. The job of a designer is to craft typefaces that maintain balance and harmony even when diacritics are present.

    I would love to see more high quality typefaces support Vietnamese and beyond.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style. (Washington: Hartley & Marks Press, 2008).
• Cheng, Karen. Designing Type. (Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2005).
• Fernandes, Gonçalo, and Carlos Assunção. “First Codification of Vietnamese by 17th-Century Missionaries: the Description of Tones and the Influence of Portuguese on Vietnamese Orthography,” HEL 39 (Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, 2017).
• Gaultney, J. Victor. “Problems of Diacritic Design for Latin Script Text Faces,” (MA thesis, University of Reading, 2002).
• Lương, N. Hiền. “Chữ Quốc Ngữ Chữ Nuớc Ta: Từ Alexandre de Rhodes đến Trương Vĩnh Ký.” Tập San 11 (Australia: Nhóm Nghiên Cứu Văn Hóa Đồng Nai & Cửu Long, 2017).
• Nguyễn, Đình Hòa. “An Outline of Vietnamese,” The Vietnam Forum 11 (Connecticut: Yale Southeast Asia Studies, 1988).
• Thompson, Laurence. A Vietnamese Grammar. (Washington: University of Washington Press, 1965).
• Turčić, Maja, Antun Koren, Vesna Uglješić, and Ivan Rajković. “Design and Positioning of Diacritical Marks in Latin Typefaces,” Acta Graphica 185 (University of Zagreb, Croatia, 2011).

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

Thanks to professor Jandos Rothstein for his guidance in working with me on this final project to complete my Master of Arts in Graphic Design.

Thanks to Linh Nguyễn for her critical evaluation of the first draft. Based on her invaluable feedback, I rewrote almost everything.

Thanks to Jim Van Meer for his meticulous proofreading of the early drafts.

Thanks to Trang Nguyễn, Raymond Schwartz, and Chris Silverman for their thorough editing, detailed assessments, and indispensable inputs.

Thanks to Phạm Đam Ca for taking his time to explain to me the nuances of Vietnamese type design.

Thanks to David Jonathan Ross for allowing me the opportunity to work with him on extending Fern to support Vietnamese for the second edition.

Thanks to my wife, Nguyễn Đức Hải Dung, for her continuous support.

FRONT MATTER

   “Initially, I was completely unaware that this site was meant to help typographers, as the Google search only directed me towards the “Tone Marks” page. Upon further reading though, I can see that this site offers the utmost respect to our language and simultaneously teaches typographers how to create optimum designs for its use on the screen… Your work is beautiful and your passion for our language is quite inspiring. I have never seen this sort of appreciation for Vietnamese by a Vietnamese person before.” — Susan Trần.

    “While I don’t speak Vietnamese, I am a fan of Donny’s work and think more people should be aware of typographic resources for languages other than Western ones. Donny updated the layout, design, and (shockingly) the type and typography. It’s beautiful.” — Jason Pamental, designer & author.

    “For those interested in proper Vietnamese typography, Donny Trương provides a good introduction, including an overview of the letters with diacritics that are actually used for marking tonal distinctions in this language.”  — Florian Hardwig, co-editor, Fonts In Use.

    “You make a great case on your website that good Vietnamese typography is doable, but requires special care. Vietnamese support is a good thing to have when marketing fonts towards international companies, and, it’s one more way to distinguish the font from the millions of others out there.” — David Jonathan Ross, type designer.

  “Donny Truong’s site gets deep into the history and current implementations of Vietnamese typography, and is itself a great example of our character subsets in use. It’s also a great design.” — Sally Kerrigan, content editor, Typekit.

   “I just wanted to congratulate you on the release of Vietnamese typography thesis. It was a much needed information on the subject, and will be used as a reference for years to come.” — Toshi Omagari, type designer, Monotype.

   “Your discussion of the typographical problems is exactly what we discussed in late 1980’s and early 1990’s, especially our discussion with a typographer from Xerox. This is exciting to hear and see again. And we do need this discussion over and over again.” — Ngô Thanh Nhàn, computational linguist, New York University.

   “My name is Sebastian, and together with my friend William we recently started our own type foundry. I’m just writing to thank you for your incredible website, which was very useful for the Vietnamese component of our first releases.” — Sebastian Losch, Kilotype.

   “I also added support for Vietnamese, using Donny Trương’s book Vietnamese Typography as my guide. Vietnamese uses stacked diacritical marks on some vowels, so I had to carefully balance the weight of each mark to work in single mark letters and Vietnamese… Designing the Vietnamese marks improved my skills designing marks, making this the best collection of diacritical marks I’ve ever produced.” — James Puckett, founder, Dunwich Type Founders.

   “It took me some time to get in to the way of building diacritics for Vietnamese, but I must say that your web really helped me to understand them.” — Noe Blanco, typeface designer & font engineer, Klim Type Foundry.

   “This is a rather gorgeous looking mini online-book about its history, quirks, details and design challenges. Even if you don’t think you’re interested in the language, this is a mandatory read if you’re interested in languages, at all.” — Ricardo Magalhães, web developer & UI designer.

   “The precision and clarity of your points are really visible on Vietnamese Typography.” — Thomas Jockin, type designer & organizer of TypeThursday.

   “This is excellent timing … Your thesis site has been very useful!” — Christian Schwartz, partner, Commercial Type.

   “I would very much like to thank you for your excellent Vietnamese Typography website, it is a true gem for any type designer venturing into the language.” — Johannes Neumeier, Underscore.

   “A good starting point to better understand the history and the typographic challenges of Vietnamese is Donny Trương’s online book Vietnamese Typography.” — TypeTogether.

  “I would like to thank you for putting the history of Vietnamese typography for all to read. (I also research topics and put them up for free—it’s rare today to visit a blog of substance without a bunch of ads and pop-ups.)” — Nancy Stock-Allen, author & design traveler.

    “I had a commission for expanding a bespoke font to support Vietnamese language. Your website about Vietnamese typography has been my guide through the process and I really enjoyed to learn about your language.” — Juanjo López, type designer, letterer & letterpress printer.

   “I think more and more designers/foundries are starting to consider Vietnamese support for larger extended language sets. More companies are commissioning extensions for brand faces. Information like Trương’s site goes a long way toward making it more practical for non-native designers to consider.” — Kent Lew, type designer, Font Bureau.

   “Donny—thanks for touching on an issue a lot of type designers ignore. Keep it up! You’ll change the world.” — See original letter.

  “I stumbled into this really interesting and informative site about Vietnamese typography while researching localization and character support for a project. So well done, I wish there was a guide like this for all languages and character sets.” — Tyrus.

   “I am so glad to see someone distill all the thoughts that go into good Vietnamese typography… I’ve sent my donation to support your online book as gift to future designers in our community.” — Ngô Thiên Bảo, software developer.

   “I really enjoyed reading your website. It is great for non native type designers to find recommendations for designing properly the glyphs for other languages. I am now designing a new font, also with vietnamese support. I hope to make it well. Thanks again and best regards from Argentina.” — Juan Pablo del Peral, graphic designer, Huerta Tipografica.

   “Excellent site, I just read through it all and although I have not yet implemented Vietnamese support to any existing typefaces, I feel I have a greater understanding of all the details and what it will take. I’m sure I’ll add support to a future release, and I’ll remember your site as a great resource. Thanks for your help.” — Michael Jarboe, type designer, AE Type.

BAN TU THU
02 /2020

NOTES:
1: About the author: Donny Trương is a designer with a passion for typography and the web. He received his master of arts in graphic design from the School of Art at George Mason University. He is also the author of Professional Web Typography.
◊ Bold words and sepia images has been set by Ban Tu Thu – thanhdiavietnamhoc.com

SEE MORE:
◊  A brief HISTORY of VIETNAMESE WRITING – Section 1
◊  A brief HISTORY of VIETNAMESE WRITING – Section 2
◊  A brief HISTORY of VIETNAMESE WRITING – Section 3
◊  A brief HISTORY of VIETNAMESE WRITING – Section 4