In our unwritten agreement, I was responsible for the external relations of our HaH! chili products. I created the logo, designed the labels, developed the website, and, of course, promoted the products on social media. My partner, on the other hand, was responsible for making the products from scratch.

This season, she delegated much of the production to me. I must admit, I found the process of making hot sauce to be quite intensive—and literally tear-jerking. It certainly made me appreciate her efforts much more. Furthermore, I felt bad that I hadn’t gotten involved in production earlier. Then again, if I had, I wouldn’t have created the products.

I am starting to get used to the fumes, but they were powerful even from just washing the peppers. Cooking the peppers intensified the fumes even more; my eyes were watering and my whole body smelled like hot peppers. Grinding and filtering them was a tedious but essential process, and the whole batch needed to be cooked once more before bottling.

Seeing the final product was worth all the effort—the beautiful color of the sauce paired with the simple typographic label, topped off with a red seal that makes it look official. Of course, HaH! chili sauce is extraordinary and enhances any dish. I stand behind it. I guarantee it.

One of the advantages web-based books have over traditional printed books is dynamic design. The cover of my web-based book, Vietnamese Typography, is a perfect example. As of this writing, the title and the author’s name are set in 60 different display typefaces. Each time readers land on the cover page, a typeface is loaded at random. A traditional print book can’t do that.

Launched as my final thesis for my MA in graphic design, Vietnamese Typography originally came out in both print and web versions. The cover was set in Adobe Garamond Premier, designed by Robert Slimbach. Its high-contrast display styles made Garamond Premier ideal for the book’s large title on the cover. For a book on typography, however, I didn’t want to limit the cover to just one typeface.

After the book launched, I finished my graduate program. The project was complete, and I didn’t need to touch it again. For a year or so, I left it untouched, but then I started to miss it. I began playing around with the site—mostly updating content and adding new typefaces that support Vietnamese. I expanded the type recommendations and reworked the samples. At this point, the web version was drastically different from the print edition. From fixing errors to adding new material, making changes to the web version was instantaneous.

As I collected more typefaces that supported Vietnamese, I wanted to showcase them in the book. In addition to the recommendation and sample sections, the cover was the best place to show off display typefaces—a dynamic feature possible only on the web. This was one of the main reasons I decided to drop the print edition entirely for the second edition of Vietnamese Typography and focus all my attention and resources on the web version.

For the second edition, I decided to add diacritics to the book title (Việtnamese) and the author’s name (Trương). I wanted to demonstrate that these display typefaces can be used to set Vietnamese text. To see all of these typefaces, readers would have to revisit the homepage repeatedly or keep refreshing the page. To save them time, here is the list of all 60 display typefaces:

1. Alright
2. Aneto
3. ACE
4. Atlante
5. Ballinger
6. Bild
7. Bree
8. Bricolage Grotesque
9. Bungee
10. Calistoga
11. Canicule
12. Case
13. Change
14. Dattilo DJR
15. Ebony
16. Ethera
17. Fit
18. Fragen
19. Fruktur
20. Gimlet
21. Glyptic DJR
22. Harriet
23. Horizona
24. Job Clarendon
25. Kuhlman
26. Kukka
27. Kyrios
28. Lavishe
29. Lentiform
30. Loes
31. Megazoid
32. Name Sans
33. NaN Druid
34. NaN Druid Sans
35. NaN Fiasco
36. NaN Holo
37. NaN Jaune
38. NaN Metrify
39. NaN Rage
40. NaN Serf
41. NaN Spaceland
42. NaN Success
43. NaN Tragedy
44. NaN Tresor
45. NaN Weiss
46. Neue DIN
47. Nickel Gothic
48. Oi
49. Only Extended
50. Ottavio
51. Pennyroyal DJR
52. Phudu
53. Poltawski Nowy
54. Queens
55. Rhody
56. Roslindale
57. Sequenz
58. Soprano
59. Warbler
60. Xunga

We made the first batch of our HaH! Chili sauce for this season. As a bourbon lover, I had to infuse some bourbon into our sauce. Allow me to introduce the Limited Bourdon Edition.

By infusing the award-winning New Riff (Bottled In Bond) bourbon into our original HaH! Chili sauce, we elevate the art of hot sauce to the next level. Handcrafted with fresh ingredients (peppers, garlic, shallot, vinegar, and salt) and combined with the spirit of Kentucky, our bourbon chili sauce is not only Hot as Hell, but also bursting with flavors including sweet vanilla, butterscotch, clove, cinnamon, and mint. Check out the introduction video.

Welcome to the third iteration of Visualgui 2026. The first iteration launched back in February and the second iteration launched in May. Why am I keeping changing my website? I like to experiment with different looks and feels, and typography in particular.

For the latest iteration, the typesetting is all in the NaN family. I loved the NaN Tragedy, designed by Jean-Baptiste Morizot, the moment I set my eyes on her. An entanglement of simplicity and drama, Tragedy fits my personal blog. I also wanted to use a bit of the NaN Metrify superfamily, designed by Luke Prowse and J.B Morizot, to complement NaN Tragedy. For code demo, which I hardly used these days, NaN Holo Mono, designed by Luke Prowse. I wish these fonts come with small caps, but they don’t. I just use all caps for now.

I also dropped the complementary info to the bottom to give the blog posts more white space. That’s it for now. If you are reading this announcement in an RSS reader or a social media platform, jump to the live site to see the new changes.

In “Đi đường thật chậm” (Walking Slowly), Nguyễn Quỳnh Hương reminds us to take our time and to pay attention to our surroundings instead of rushing through our days. When we slow down, we will encounter the beauty of nature such as the rainbow after the rain or the cluster of wildflowers growing along the roadside. I enjoyed reading her prose and message; therefore, I wanted to create a sample page to showcase the story and the typography. The sample is typeset in ACE, designed by the Anh Chị Em community, and Yrsa, designed by Anna Giedryś and David Březina.

In Vietnamese literature, tứ tuyệt (perfect four-syllable form) is often expressed in poems, folk songs, dictions, and proverbs. Tứ tuyệt expressions are frequently used in both ordinary conversations and literary writings.There are over three thousand four-syllable idiomatic expressions in Vietnamese.

In 1970, Mr. Nguyễn Đăng Liêm wrote a special study for the Pacific Linguistics at the Australian National University titled, “Four-Syllable Idiomatic Expressions in Vietnamese.” In his study, Mr. Nguyễn selected 825 commonly used four-syllable idiomatic expressions. He broke them up into 17 groups according to their internal structure and provided clear, concise translation into English. Because this study was published almost 60 years ago, the typefaces used in the publication did not support Vietnamese language; therefore; diacritical marks were added afterward by hand.

When I came across this study, I wanted to create a Vietnamese typographic sample to preserve our literary treasure and I wanted to put back in all the Vietnamese diacritics. The process was time consuming, but it gave me an opportunity to learn each expression and to pay attention to the spellings. The main content is typeset in Skolar and Skolar Sans, designed by David Březina. Display text is set in Ethera, designed by Quang Khải.

Check out tứ tuyệt (perfect four-syllable form).

When Jim Van Meer, my friend and graduate classmate, started his own Thinkpoint Creative, the intersection of “design thinking” and “design doing,” he invited me to join the agency as Web & UI/UX Director. Our first order of business was to work together on our web presence. I collaborated with Jim to build out our vision for the agency.

After 5 years, Jim made the difficult decision to close our business operations effective December 31, 2024. The official website went dark not long after. I still love the website we worked on together; therefore, I reached out to Jim to give me permission to revive it for posterity. My wish was granted and now the archived version of Thinkpoint Creative lives on my portfolio site.

In 2010, I designed the website and developed the brand for Le Mekong Vietnamese Cuisine. Even 16 years later, the design still holds up. In the past few weeks, I decided to revive the website that I had created for posterity. Check it out.

Welcome to the second iteration of Visualgui 2026. The first iteration launched back in February this year. Since the new site launched only four months ago, why am I changing it already? I love redesigning my own site.

The first iteration was typeset in a beautiful serif typeface, which was always my preferred choice for reading text. Nevertheless, I wanted to play more with sans-serif text faces and I had been wanting to use Sofia Pro, designed by Olivier Gourvat, for a while. Since Sofia Pro is a modern geometric sans, it fits well with the grid-based layout.

The main reason to switch to Sofia Pro was for the small caps. The previous serif typeface is still a work in progress; therefore; it doesn’t have small caps yet. I just couldn’t see acronyms in all caps or fake small caps, which stuck out like sore thumbs.

Sofia Pro has well-designed small caps. In addition to acronyms, I wanted to use small caps for paragraph links. For inline text links, underlines are good for accessibility. My only issue is that the underlines always run into the ascending letters and using small caps avoids that issue. Applying small caps for links is a bit unconventional, but this is my blog. I can experiment with it.

“Quê Mẹ” (Motherland) is a portmanteau of “Quê Hương” (Homeland) and “Lòng Mẹ” (Mother Heart). Written by Y Vân, “Lòng Mẹ” is a beloved anthem for Vietnamese mothers. Every Vietnamese person knows “Lòng Mẹ” by heart from the opening line: “Lòng Mẹ bao la như biển Thái Bình rạt rào,” (Mother Heart’s vast… like the Pacific ocean…). By turning Ðỗ Trung Quân’s “Bài Học Đầu Cho Con” from a poem to a song, Giáp Văn Thạch captured the beauty and the soul of our homeland. The image of “Quê hương là chùm khế ngọt” (Home land is where the sweet carambola grows…) has burned into my brain when I was a child. Even after I migrated from Việt Nam to America, “Quê Hương” stayed with me to this day. As a result, I would like to spotlight both original pieces along with English translations (“Lòng Mẹ,” translated by Vương Thanh and “Quê Hương,” translated by Tâm Lạc Trần Quý Anh). The page is typeset in Pliego, designed by Juanjo López. Pliego’s italic was selected specifically for these lyrical poems.