Việt Type 2nd ed. Trương Support
Việtnamese Typography Second Edition Donny Trương Support This Book

“I find your website about Vietnamese glyphs very useful and professionally described. It is a great help for type designers who are unfamiliar with the Vietnamese language. Congratulations!”

“Nhờ xem trang web của chú mà mới mày mò đào sâu hơn về type design.”

“We’ve been utilizing your Vietnamese Typography site as a reference to build out the Vietnamese character set—which has been proven to be incredibly useful—and would now love your direct input and expertise on details to finalize the typeface.”

Vietnamese Typography (2nd edition) là luận án thạc sĩ của anh Donny Truong, hướng dẫn căn bản và dễ hiểu nhất và type anatomy của tiếng Việt. ‘Việt hoá’ hay thiết kế font tiếng Việt thật ra rất khó và xí lắc léo vì tiếng xứ mình có quá trời tầng… đây là 1 tài liệu quý giá, lại còn miễn phí. Thanks me later, thanks Donny first.”

“I found loads of information on Vietnamese Typography and learned a lot about its history, alphabet, tone marks, diacritics, etc. It is indeed a fascinating culture that allowed me to learn a lot more about typographic technique.”

“It’s super rare to find typography that supports Vietnamese diacritical marks. It’s why you’ll find such odd type mixes on food menus. Luckily Donny Truong is here to save us!”

“We’ve thoroughly read your book, which provided us very valuable and useful information. We are currently working on expanding one of our existing type families to support Vietnamese. We’d like to work directly with you to make sure we are delivering the best to Vietnamese readers.”

“My name is José Scaglione, I am co-founder of TypeTogether. We like your website very much and I am surprised our paths did not cross earlier.”

“The expansion of the Vietnamese characters in the Albula Pro became a lot easier thanks to Donny Trương’s fantastic website with lots of insights and information. It was exciting to dive into this world.”

“The need for diacritical marks highlighted the fact that Eater had outgrown its type system and needed to adapt its identity to fit the audience… The process started by heavily researching Vietnamese typography and how it exists within the world, which opened the door to expanding our language support with a more thoughtful long-term solution.”

“Tôi là người yêu sách giấy và calligraphy. Hy vọng email này đến được anh, mình có dịp làm quen nhau và có thể học hỏi anh một ít về lĩnh vực này. Nhất là công việc của tôi liên quan đến in giáo trình dạy nhạc, tập nhạc… mong muốn có được ít hiểu biết để Font Book của mình bớt đơn điệu.”

Đức Trí, Composer, Songwriter & Producer, Music Faces Entertainment

“My name is Ana, and I am a graphic designer and graphic design lecturer at London College for Design and Fashion Hanoi. I’ve been in Hanoi for almost 2 years now and recently I started a project named Type ơi with the aim to promote Vietnamese graphic design and typography. Arriving here made me realize how challenging it is to find Vietnamese graphic design and typography references in English to include in my lessons—your book has proven to be one of the most valuable resources for me and was one of my inspirations for this project.”

Vietnamese Typography has found its way into our radar. Your book is one of the best resources out there for contemporary type designers, and we thought the sections explaining the diacritic marks and the design challenges should be seen more widely.”

“Mình rất respect quyển sách Vietnamese Typography của bạn. Không những là vì nội dung rất hay mà còn vì quyết định của bạn chia sẻ miễn phí trên mạng, tạo ra impacts lớn đến những người muốn hỗ trợ tiếng Việt. Xin cám ơn bạn.”

“I am adding Vietnamese language support to a future font of mine. Enjoyed all your insights provided by your vietnamesetypography.com”

“Just wanted to thank you for your Vietnamese resources that have been more than helpful! While drawing my latest typeface Pangea, we tried to follow your advice.”

“I am so grateful for your resource on Vietnamese typography. TypeNetwork is adding Vietnamese characters to a typeface for a client and I am curious about your advice.”

“Thanks to Donny Trương for his excellent resource on Vietnamese Typography, as well as for his specific review of the Vietnamese characters of Name Sans, which helped reveal some opportunities to make them more natural & unified. This was a push, but totally worth it for all the people it will enable to make use of Name Sans!”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Mình mới tìm hiểu về Typo, cũng chưa biết cụ thể nó như thế nào, sức mạnh của nó đến đâu, chỉ biết là mình thích thì mình tìm hiểu và học hỏi. Qua tìm hiểu mình vô tình biết được cuốn sách này của tác giả Donny Trương, mình nghĩ nó thực sự hữu ích cho việc quảng bá ngôn ngữ Việt Nam ra toàn thế giới, rất hữu ích cho những nhà thiết kế font chữ có thể hiểu được và bổ sung thêm những ký tự hỗ trợ ngôn ngữ Tiếng Việt. Trong trường hợp nếu bạn đang Việt hóa font chữ thì đây cũng là 1 tài liệu tham khảo hữu ích.”

“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.”

“Chữ Quốc Ngữ đặt ra những thử thách gì cho type designer? Đây là một bài luận án cuối khóa cực hay của anh Donny Trương. Dành cho những ai muốn mở rộng việc design type ra khỏi bảng chữ Latin thông thường. Cover sơ phần lịch sử chữ nước ta từ thời chữ Nôm tới Quốc Ngữ. Nghiên cứu về cách đặt dấu cho tiếng Việt và có ví dụ những font hay chữ đẹp từ những typeface trên thế giới có support tiếng Việt. Ngoài ra anh cũng có những dự án khác khá hay.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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, Type Designer & Font Engineer, Klim Type Foundry

“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.)”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The precision and clarity of your points are really visible on Vietnamese Typography.”

“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

“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.”

“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.”

“This is excellent timing … Your thesis site has been very useful!”

“Việc làm này của anh không chỉ ý nghĩa với type design mà với cả cộng đồng người Việt nữa.”

“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.”

“Your project is very useful to journals and magazines that usually do not try to print Quốc Ngữ.”

“Attention to special aesthetic features of Quốc Ngữ is a great project, and I hope at least that your work opens up new visual possibilities for Vietnamese type.”

John D. Phan, Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures

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