Duong T®an

A chill Vietnamese Graphic-turned-Type Designer sharing his works and passion.

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• Custom Typefaces
• Vietnamese Diacritics Support
• Lettering/Logotype

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The typefaces are currently W.I.P, but feel free to license it! You'll get all future updates for free.

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Email for support: hi@dgtran.com

Info

I’m not a researcher, though I love digging into things—that’s where ideas usually start.

I’m not a collector either, but I can’t help keeping old stamps, books, specimens, and tags around for inspiration.

I'm not a calligrapher, though I love drawing calligraphic forms.

I’m sometimes a typographer, and I love playing around with it.

I’m a graphic-turned-type designer based in Hanoi, Vietnam. I love crafting letterforms that sit somewhere between precision and emotion—making functional design feel a little more poetic. My work has earned recognition from the Type Directors Club, D&AD, It's Nice That, Creative Boom, Behance, and more.

By day, I’m at @B&A Design Agency. But by night, I’m all alone geeking out over letters.

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Behance

Sun, Nov 30, 202511:13:34 AM

Hanoi Grotesk

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A customized grotesk, serving as a holistic solution for the HFCD24 brand identity. Inspired by the architecture of the "Cung Văn Hóa thiếu nhi," the font features unique architectural cuts and essential Open-Type.

2024, Custom Type, Đình Collective, Hanoi Festival of Creativity and Design

Photo by Tân Tân, Đīnh Collective

One night, Nhatanh Nguyen - the founder of Đình Collective asked me for a catalogue of my sans serif, which I teased a few images on Instagram sometimes. Suprisingly, I was ordered to customized the most basic sans from it.

As a a holistic solution for the identity, the typeface needs to transfer the same concept from the logo mark and mascot, which designed inspire from the organized place - “Cung Văn Hóa thiếu nhi”. Architecture cuts are added to detail of each letters, alongside some open-type features like alternates, ligatures to make it more diverse. Hanoi Grotesk has 3 weights, in which the Regular used to most, while others acted as a supporting role for logotype or highlight.

Okay, why “Hanoi Grotesk”? Honestly, it’s too stressful to add a city name to a typeface. But Nhatanh is way too cool for that, and I think the word “grotesk”, which is weird or consider new, is quite suitable in the context of breathing something fresh to the city identity, as this year theme is Creative intersection. So yes, Hanoi Grotesk was born and went out like a wind.

The identity pattern was transformed into a font, so designers can simply type it out. And there's no gaps between lines in Figma make it super easy to use!

Screenshot of the re-engineering process for each letterform, with every glyph aligned to a square 2048px em box.

Cool photo from Nhatanh Nguyen

Credits

Project Manager: Quan Le
Executive Designer: Thế Huy
Mascot Designer: Thủy Nguyễn
Junior Designer: Anh Duy Vũ
Website Design & Development: Tien Dat Ta
Design System Development: Tạ Sơn Quỳnh
Guideline Designer: Lan Dao
Animation Designer: Nguyễn Hữu Thiện
Photography: Đỗ Ngọc Tân
Design Assistant: Bá Điệp

Related Case Studies

↦ Celano Sans, Custom Type, 2024