REFLECTION 1
D
URING THE SUMMER I took my second Handmade Web course taught by Aidan Quinlan and Nontsi happened to be enrolled in the course. I mostly used the course to nail down my understanding of code, but also work on my portfolio site throughout the summer. During one of the multiple critiques I was showing my progress on my portfolio site and Nontsi gave me the idea of creating a hybrid alphabet. She said designers are “so focused on communication but not a hybrid” and she urged me to begin a project where I made my own alphabet with a mix of English and Viet w ords that looks readable from afar but makes no sense up close. Going into Typographic Systems I’ve had the intention of fulfilling this goal. I’ve only glanced at some parts, but “The Book of Signs” will be helpful for
the future project. I was raised Presbyterian and my teachers taught me the signifiers of Christianity (how the Presbyterian logo fits a diving dove, an open bible and the outline of Jesus on the cross into a single cross) and ever since I’ve been interested in how simple strokes and forms could represent so much. Reading “Alphabet Reform Committee” has helped me contextualize the English alphabet, specifically the colonized version of the Vietnamese language. I think it’s interesting how the reading talks about relegating other languages to make them seem inferior. I was also interested in how unicode was set up for disaster in the reading, “I Can Text You A Pile of Poo, But I Can’t Write My Name”. I never realized how unicode has mostly latin characters and left other languages behind. It’s also