Currently living and working in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, graphic and self-taught type designer Quynhhuong Nguyen takes inspiration from her heritage and language. Her work often consists of beautiful hand-lettered, type-based motion and illustrative pieces which reflect Vietnamese culture.
Seeing typography as a way to celebrate her cultural background and connect with other local Vietnamese creatives; what initially started off as handwriting practice during Quynhhuong’s school years has become her passion and a key part of her creative expression. Her lettering series ‘What Mom Taught’ a project exploring Vietnamese idioms/proverbs, inspired by her mother, where Quynhhuong challenged herself to bring emotion through words and the compositional structure.
Having recently pivoted her practice to be primarily focused on typography and lettering, Quynhhuong hopes that creating work in her native language will help influence others within her local creative community to do the same and celebrate their origins. She is passionate about raising awareness of the diversity in Vietnamese typography and visual culture in the worldwide creative industry.
We talked with Quynhhuong to find where she thinks the design industry is heading the next few years, her thoughts on diversity and inclusion and her insightful advice on developing your individual creative practice.
Where do you get your inspiration from and how do you approach a new project?
The main inspiration behind my passion projects comes from those closest to me – those I feel most attached to and cherish. It’s only from things I feel passionate about that I can spend a lot of time thinking, developing, and completing an idea in a thorough and comprehensive way.
The way I approach new projects is firstly to spend time on the content: What topic will my project revolve around? How can I express it in terms of visuals? How can I use typography for each concept? I move from one idea to another and then I look at how to layout the work to present it in the most impactful way. Finally, I take into consideration whether the piece needs animation to bring it to life.
“It’s only from things I feel passionate about that I can spend a lot of time thinking, developing, and completing an idea in a thorough and comprehensive way.”
“Places in Vietnam – is a project about famous tourist destinations in Vietnam. At the beginning of the project I practiced creating ligatures and decided to focus on developing ligature pairs.”
What advice would you give to current design students or women/marginalised genders considering a career in the design industry?
The top tip would be to learn and understand the basics. These days, there are many design tools and trendy design effects which you might feel you’re missing out on or maybe you’re not able to afford. However, you can gain confidence in your design if you fully understand and grasp the basics. Understanding the structure and nature of things to make better decisions, can really help with your growth as a designer. Then, by combining those with design tools and effects, your work will shine.
Secondly, don’t be afraid to ask questions from those who have more experience — for example, many famous designers with years of knowledge and skills host informative Q&A sessions which you can join. Another helpful tool is listening to podcasts. Everyone has their own journey and by exposing yourself to different stories, you’ll understand that on this journey, everyone has their own struggles. Supporting the creative community and being open to collaboration is also another great way to grow and learn from others and be a part of something bigger.
Thirdly, experimenting with different styles should not be something scary. This tip is especially for those who are still trying to find their own style. Through exploration, you can discover more about yourself over time that will eventually help to form your style. Challenge yourself with the passion projects you come up with – these can be about anything, and you can train yourself to express the ideas you want through a variety of outcomes and styles. It’s okay to spend more time with your work too – design is not a race and you should go at your own pace. Figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of your design should help you find ways to overcome challenges. Lastly, this journey is not easy for anyone so keep in mind and in heart an inquisitive spirit, strive to strive and stay humble. You’ll get there.
“…you can gain confidence in your design if you fully understand and grasp the basics. Understanding the structure and nature of things to make better decisions, can really help with your growth as a designer.”
Do you have any women role models or mentors who have shaped your career?
My mother played an important role in my education. Although she doesn’t shape my design style, she has an important influence on my mindset. It’s helped me understand what the purpose of my design is and what messages I want to convey. I want to contribute to making a small impact and that motivation is driven by the upbringing I got from my mother. My friends have also been a huge part of my journey – mostly women, they are young and talented and we are each other’s emotional and spiritual support in this creative field.
“What Mom Taught – is a project about Vietnamese idioms/proverbs, inspired by my mother. I challenged myself on another level with this project because most of the sentences are quite long which forced me to find a way to both express emotions through words and bring overall harmony to the structure of the sentence.”
Where do you think design is heading in the next five years and how will you adapt?
In the next 5 years, there will be the rise of motion design, 3D designs, coding, and virtual reality. These new approaches will most likely dominate the market since everything is moving more towards digital. In the different types of content, we consume every day, these tools help to effectively engage audiences by having instant impact and more engaging storytelling. It’s a huge benefit to brands and advertising strategies.
However, in contrast when people are tired of looking at screens, they will return to print culture. What we feel, smell, and can study with our own eyes will bring a different feeling. This can be summed up as, ‘the old are living in the new’, where graphic design seems to be moving very quickly into artificial intelligence technology, but at the same time 2D design still has its place, particularly if it’s designed simply and meticulously. An example of this is the rise in the use of Roman, Italic and Black letters, which have been with us for so many years and are currently dominating the market again; being infused with new concepts, innovation, and tools. Variable typefaces will be playing key roles and more typefaces will be supported in many new languages. This is how we include diversity and preserve different cultures and languages.
Navigating between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ is my way of adapting. I’m aiming to improve my motion skills so that I can apply them to various contexts and in the next 5 years, I want to employ these in my work. In addition, it’s beneficial to always collaborate with other creatives who have more expertise in their specialist field. I hope designers will find a way to blend in and adapt well with the upcoming changes. But at the same time, hopefully print culture will still play an important role and the physical experience of reading will still be preserved.
“Saigon Heat – is an Ores group x Saigon Heat basketball team lyrics video project. My responsibility was to design and create motion for the chorus part. This gave me the opportunity to work with existing fonts and bring a lot of energy through experimenting with typography.”
How do you think we can encourage greater diversity and inclusion across the creative industries?
I think we need more platforms such as DesignbyWomen and Femmetype to showcase the work of under-represented creatives. Bringing people together for discussion, exploring themes and addressing issues such as: How to make creativity thrive in an environment where there is a lack of education? How to find and select the right design resources for self-taught designers who can’t afford extensive design training? What opportunities are there for creatives who don’t have the opportunity to integrate internationally? Once we have a strong foothold and things are heading in the right direction, we will have the opportunity to see more work from creatives from many different cultures and customs. At the same time, platforms can also raise awareness of diversity in typography culture and design in general.
“Bringing people together for discussion, exploring themes and addressing issues such as: How to make creativity thrive in an environment where there is a lack of education? How to find and select the right design resources for self-taught designers who can’t afford extensive design training? What opportunities are there for creatives who don’t have the opportunity to integrate internationally?”