Type Design
“Thy can talk about fonts all day!”
Well, not only talking about them, but I also spend really long time drawing fonts. As a native speaker, I often collaborate with type designers and foundries on creating typefaces that need Vietnamese support under my own type design practice – Mai Type. As type design is still perceived as a "Western-centric" discipline, I hope to minimise the dissimilarity gap between markets in the future.
In my free days, I love spending time discussing type-related matters with Lưu Chữ, Counter Forms and Modern Type.
My fonts
Eyja
Eyja is a revival project from my Type@Cooper program in 2021. It is based on a serif typeface found in an 1852 edition of "Visit to Iceland and The Scandinavian North" by Ida Pfeiffer.
Released with
Counter Forms
Available in Regular
MT Mighty Mono
Mighty Mono is a low-contrast, geometric monospaced typeface. It is my interpretation with the letterforms that I have been familiar with since primary school in Vietnam, such as the ‘i’ with the little tail, or the single-storey ‘a’ and ‘g’.
Released with
Modern Type
Available in Light, Regular, Medium, Semi Bold, and Bold
Mai Display
Mai Display (previously Untitled Display) is a reverse-contrast display sans inspired by the old hand-painted signages in Vietnam, which are well-known typography visual materials.
Released with
Featured work & achievements
ATypI Brisbane 2024 Speaker
Representing Lưu Chữ, my Vietnamese Typography Collective, I shared our journey preserving Vietnamese Typography's cultural essence amid modernisation and our research on its documented evolution.
Counter Forms Launch Panel
Counter Forms is a new typographic venture that seeks to champion young, discursive, Antipodean type designers. It was a privilege for me to contribute as a member of the collective and participate in the launch panel at the Melbourne Art Book Fair 2023.
Typographic solution for Rarau mai Living city
Rarau mai Living City is an immersive exhibition delving into Auckland through data. Created by Auckland War Memorial and OOM Creative, with contributions from Michael Dunbar, my Masters supervisor. OOM Creative enlisted me to craft Māori pixel fonts for the LED data display, drawing from my expertise in diacritics developed during my Masters. Two pixel fonts were tailored to showcase Te Reo Māori with clarity.
Forward to the Past
In Further Reading Print No.3, I wrote ‘Forward to the Past’, an essay on Vietnamese typography and my type journey. Seeing how type design is still perceived as a ‘Western-centric’ discipline, I hope to minimise the dissimilarity gap between the markets in the future.
The Malee Scholarship 2021 Finalist
Last year I was honoured to be selected as one of three finalists of The Malee Scholarship 2021, a scholarship fund initiated and funded by Sharp Type, to support and empower women of colour in type design field.
Her Design Stories (Interview)
'Her Design Stories', created by Trần Phương Thảo Ngọc, is a design project that aims to support and empower female designers in Vietnam.
Up? Down? Left? Right?
In 2019, I completed my master’s degree at RMIT University with the research called Up? Down? Left? Right?, on the process of designing Vietnamese diacritics. It aims to provide a framework for typographers, type designers, and designers to reference, exploring the historical context and proper positioning of diacritics. The project also demonstrates practical implementation through the creation of two fonts: Mighty Mono and Untitled Display (now Mai Display).