trongnguyenco

[trongnguyenco]

Our Europe trip 2019 - Back home

02 Nov 2019,

November, it came and I don’t even notice. We’re playing back to Singapore, it’s a long flight, 12 hours. Long long long flight.

My phone is playing the song “Nước ngoài (foreign) ” by Phan Mạnh Quỳnh. The song is about the story of young workers who left their family, their country to work abroad, dreaming to have a better life. They usually go to Korea, Japan, France, especially England. Some people go there by the government program, some bo there by themself - illegally.

The moment I’m writing those lines, 39 Vietnamese people’s bodies were found in a container in Essex, England. They died because of the cold temperature. The news convulsed the whole country.

According to the government, 300.000 Vietnamese people try to cross the border to England every year, with a dream to become rich one day. Some people are still chasing that dream, some are not that lucky.

They have no way to come back to Vietnam. They paid lots of money for illegal agents. If they come back, they wouldn't pay the debt. We have reached the point of no return, even with their life.

That to say going abroad isn’t an easy choice. We have to exchange for many things.

We are luckier than them. We came to Singapore legally and are being paid well. And this what Vietnamese people who are in Vietnam think about us, who are living and working abroad: a rich and good life.

Day by day, more Vietnamese people go abroad to work. Yes, we are being paid well, at least higher than in Vietnam. Even the living cost is higher, but still can save some money, if we know how to economize.

But life isn’t just money.

Remembering the time we were still in Vietnam. Every morning, a hot bowl of noodles is ready for us by our mother, or if she doesn’t cook that day, we have so many choices in front of our house. Then we grab a motorbike to have a morning coffee with friends, chat and laugh about life, work then come to the office. At the end of the day, we come back home with dinner is ready. Our father would say: “Oh, come home? Take a shower then eat, my children.” The sound is just so warm and sweet.

On the weekend, I like to sit at a street cafe and talk to our friends, brothers. Still, some complaints about our works, also about the new MV of Son Tung MTP, about the MU vs Chelsea match tonight.

They are simple things. Anyone in Vietnam is like that. And you will miss those simple things when you go abroad. You will miss your mother’s hot noodle bowl, the complaints about the boss from friends and your father’s warm voice.

The next thing you would miss is good. Every morning, when you open your eyes, there are hundreds of things you can eat for breakfast, right in front of the doors. They are mì quảng, phở, bún giò, bún tái, bánh bèo, bánh ướt, cháo,… and the list goes on.

What about in Singapore? Kaya toast and Coffee C. It’s the traditional breakfast in Singapore. Singaporeans eat it every morning! Actually, it’s not bad, but it’s the only choice. Otherwise, you can choose a hundred types of bread which I’m sick with.

How about lunch and dinner? In Vietnam, we have so many delicious foods: mỳ quảng, cơm sườn, bánh tráng thịt heo,… and many types of rice. In Singapore, to be honest, they have many different types of foods: Chinese, Hainanese, Thail, Malay, Indian and Vietnam. But I struggle to find things to eat. Many choices, but they just aren’t to our taste. Twice the time a week, I choose Vietnamese bread (bánh mì) - which I’ve never eaten for lunch and dinner in Vietnam.

Wondering, if we don’t cook at home, we might not stay in Singapore anymore.

We are on the way back to Singapore from our Europe trip. We’ve been to 5 countries, tried many local foods, also Vietnamese food in the place we’ve come. You can say that traveling is to enjoy local food, to experience a different life. But we just live without Vietnamese food. We’re staying abroad, but our souls are in Vietnam.

In the series

Our Europe trip 2019 - Paris

Our Europe trip 2019 - Germany

Our Europe trip 2019 - Bye Belgium

[trongnguyenco]

Our Europe trip 2019 - Paris

Paris, 24 Oct 2019

2 days are too short to visit Paris. It has so many things to see and do there.

I didn’t have enough time to go inside Saint Chappelle to see its incredible interior. We didn’t go up on Eiffel tower to see the whole city from the top. We didn’t go inside Louvre, the largest museum in the world. My friend said that if we want to visit the whole museum, 3 months are quired. We didn’t go to the Palace of Versailles, one of the most beautiful palaces in the world.

And a hundred of other museums.

Then we have reasons to come back to Paris.

But where did we go in Paris?

We started the journey in Paris with a walking tour by ourselves along the Seine river. We walked from Sainte Chapelle to Louvre. In our eyes, Paris is so spectacle and imposing, with so many old buildings. Yellow-green leaves cover on yellow pastel building like a thin silk cover the city, makes Paris softer.

The next day, we visited Acr de Triomph in the early morning, around 8:30 pm. We went there early to avoid crowded tourist. But some people came before us, checked in in the front of the giant gate on the Champs-Élysées avenue. The funny thing is that most of them are Vietnamese. We wait for a while to have more space to take some photos with the giant gate.

People said that Champs-Élysées is the richest area of Paris. If you look on the map, Champs-Élysées avenue is a straight line. If Acr de Triomph is a point of Paris, drawing one line across this point from north to south, you will have Champs-Élysées avenue. And if you draw other lines cross that point, you dawn the map of Paris.

From there, we took a bus to see mademoiselle Eiffel tower. When coming close to the Eiffel, she was not as tall as I imagine.

Hm, what to say about this lady? There were already so many articles about here, I don’t want to create another existing article about her. MY words are just less interesting than the others.

We wanted to come closer to say something to here. But might be she wouldn’t hear us, she a haughty woman. But I don’t care, we came to say one thing, not for her, but for us: “Hey, I’m here! Bye bye!”

In the series:

Our Europe trip 2019 - Germany

Our Europe trip 2019 - Bye Belgium

[trongnguyenco]

Our Europe trip 2019 - Bye Belgium

22 Oct 2019, train to Paris - Travel or not, it’s just a choice and life is a collection of choice.

Good bye Belgium, the second country of the journey, we are coming to Paris, France.

The autumn green field covers the whole of Europe: a young green tree, fresh grass, yellow leaf. Autumn is the most beautiful season of the year, at least for me. And it will be more beautiful if we just have a little bit of sunshine.

Beautiful lands are waiting for us. In the past, it was my dream. Coming to France is my purpose or learning French. But it didn’t work out. But today, we are here, under the Eiffel tower and yell to her: “Hey, I came” by my self, not thanks to scholarships :) 

Yes, traveling costs money. We need money to travel. Other people think that if you can travel, you’re rich. For me, it’s just the choice.

You have lots of money, but you can’t stop your work, your daily responsibilities, you will stay at home.

Or when you don’t have much money, you choose to save for the future.

In both cases, you can choose to go to new places, to see how big the world is, to learn about the amazing architecture, technologies, to know that other people are also very nice, polite, not only Vietnamese people.

Like Passenger said in his song:

“Only hate the road when you’re missing home”

or Tiên tiên with her popular songs with Soobin Hoàng Sơn:

“Đi thật xa để thèm được về nhà”

Travel or not, it’s just a choice and life is a collection of choice.

[trongnguyenco]

Our Europe trip 2019 - Germany

Berlin, 20 Oct 2019

Our flight has just departed to Cologne, a small and ancient city in the west of Germany.

What am I feeling right now? I’m angry because of the fine of €120. Fk Berlin station network, you got a huge usability issue and you are too old and weak to fix it. How do we, as the first time tourist to the city, know the destination is the inner or outer city to buy the right ticket? We tried to find a map to know the place we will go whether inner or outer but we couldn’t find any.

I know your system runs based on honesty. But did you test our product? Did you listen to tourist’s feedback? Or just maybe you want it that way to get money from us.

Anyway, it’s the only bad reason fro Berlin. Now I’m going to tell you about Berlin.

We arrived at 7 am and Berlin welcomes us with cold rain. We were so nervous about the immigration system because it’s the first time we come to Europe. Luckily, it was very easy and fast. Thanks for Berlin’s Customs.

But we arrived too early, couldn’t check-in at that time. We could only do it after 3 pm. Eight hours more. What could we do with two luggage and two backpacks on our shoulders?

First, we had to get used to the transport system here. Before the trip, a colleague gave me some advice on how to use the metro/bus system here. He said that after I bought the ticket, I had to do one more thing to use the metro. Otherwise, I would be fined. And another thing was that if you were in the ticket machine, someone would ask me if I need help, he would ask for money from me.

“What? Why? We bought the tickets already. Why do I need to do another thing? Really?” - That’s what inside my head when hearing about it. So complicated and scary.

When arriving here, I got what he meant. We tinkered away at a ticket machine without acknowledging what should we do. And then I man came and asked if we need help. He looked like a passenger so we trusted him and asked for help. He suggested buying a day ticket so we can go anywhere during the day with the only €7. And it was good.

With the day ticket on hand, we picked our first place to go: Schloss Charlottenburg. We didn’t think that we would go here since it was just an optional choice for us. But we went there for no reason.

It rained harder after arriving there. We bought two tickets to visit the whole palace.

In general, I don’t like museums or palaces. I prefer nature. But when coming inside, I was surprised by the interior and items. They were items I could only see in the movie. Now I was watching them with my real eyes. The most interesting part was when we turn our heads up,  we were stupefied by wonderful paintings on the roof, rich in detail, large object (one painting with different characters, context, stories).

When we came to the new wing, we came to paradise. All the walls were painted with mint color trees and supported by yellow lines. I always have a big love for color. That was a great one and I admired that artist who made it. They said that it was the place the king lived in the summer, but for some reason, he used this place for his sibling's weddings. Generous king.

Yah, Berlin surprised us with its original beauty royal palace.

In the afternoon, we came to the center of the city to check-in our Airbnb house. The host welcomed us with a nice apartment and a warm and close introduction about his house, his family. German people are so friendly and polite.

I remembered the advertising message from Airbnb in the past: “Don't stay, live there”. Through some experiences in Vietnam and Korea, I don’t think it’s an honest message. But when we stayed here in Berlin, we felt home.

We had a nice room with a warm bed, a private toilet, a kitchen was always available for us. The host welcomed us enthusiasm and when it rained, his wife gave us an umbrella even though we didn’t ask her.

Another day, we came to Cologne, the uncle host picked up us with his Audi A6. He said that his place wasn’t convenient, it was a bit far from the station. So he came to pick up us at the station with a warm and generous voice. And of course, a beautiful room. We had our kitchen inside the room. When we stayed there, we had to go around 10km to go to the city, but we didn’t mind, we were staying in a peaceful area.

Cologne is a small city in the west of Germany. We spent two days there but actually, one day is enough. Cologne Cathedral is the most beautiful place here, and it’s one of two reasons we decided to visit Cologne (the other reason is it’s close to Belgium).

After coming to the house, we knew that there was another city near us, Bonn,  where Beethoven’s birthplace. We were very surprised knowing this small but interesting thing on the journey.

Now we are on the train to Brussels, Belgium. According to the Weather.com said that the whole day today would be gloomy. Hopefully, they are wrong. Or just simply no rain.

[trongnguyenco]

Imposter syndrome is real

Designers, let’s get over it.

When I first heard about the term imposter syndrome is when I was working in Vietnam. And it’s a good-to-know for me because I’ve never faced that problem. I was very confident in my works. I was the only designer on the team. I didn’t have a chance to compare to anyone else. So I’ve never known that I was not good.

Things changed when I moved to Singapore last year, started a new job at a big company where I had more than 10 designers to work with. They are very talented and confident. Then I experienced the monster imposter syndrome.

I couldn't introduce myself on the first day of the new job.

I didn’t give any feedback during the designer’s meeting where all designers presented their work and got feedback from other designers. Because their work was so good and perfect for me.

I didn’t even ask any questions at the meeting. I was scared of speaking in English with my Vietnamese accent. People would judge me as a bad designer with weak communication.

I didn’t raise my voice even though I had different thoughts. Because I didn’t think that my opinion was better than the others.

It took me more than three weeks to adapt and start to talk, debate and give feedback. And I realized that imposter syndrome is real.

How do we get over it or what is good advice for new designers who’ve just started a new place where there are many good people?

It absolutely will get better over time, after we understand more about the team, business, technical constraints and people in the office. To ease the effect of that syndrome, you have to know that:

Imposter syndrome is real

And it happens to many people. Many people are facing it too. That’s why so many people talked about it. From Kenny Chen’s lessons after a year at Google to Tobias van Schneider and Julie Zhou…. You’re not alone. It’s a fact of life.

If you face it then it’s a good sign

It means that you are in a place that’s challenging. There are many people are better than you and you have chances to improve yourself by learning from them. You will learn not only from designers but also from other people: engineers, product managers,… I got a wise reminder from the engineers I’m working with

“Learning is about challenging yourself, not sticking to your comfort zone.”

Focus on the strengths of being different rather than weaknesses

The company hired us because of some reasons: we have potential and we’re different. They don’t want all team members to have the same mindset, skill, and styles. We will fit the team with our differences.

Be brave my friends. Or at least fake it until you make it. In a 1:1 conversation, my manager said it to me that he hadn’t known what he was talking about during meetings. He had just talked and faked it likes he was very confident. We would get used to it.

“Fake it till you make it.”

[trongnguyenco]

Share earlier

Now I understand why it’s very important for designers.

I used to work in a small start-up where I was the only designer, took care of the whole product design. I could decide the direction of the design and all the details. Sometimes, I had to sync with other departments, but not truly sharing, informing is more accurate.

Now, when moving to a bigger company with hundreds of people, twenty different teams and a dozen designers, sharing earlier is much more important than ever.

I’m a shy designer, bad at convincing people. And I’m scared of sharing my works with other designers. Because I might not have a strong point of view about things - or I’m not confident to speak up. The other designers usually have strong opinions about better design, especially seniors or persons who’d stay for a long time at the company. They seem very convincing. And I often change the design based on their feedback, even sometimes, I don’t think it’s better. It makes me frustrated. It seems like I can’t fully control the design and not own anything.

Because of that, I don’t share so often.

One day, I have a new product manager, he’s interim, managing two teams at the same time. So I have to work with another designer - the other one of this team. Even though I own the product but it affects to her team, so we have to work closely together.

We did a talk to kickstart the project, discussed what we can do, what are the problem and how to move forward. I felt very well at it. I got useful insights from her previous user testing, and great advice not to spend a lot of time on it yet, things can change when syncing with other teams.

We deiced to envolve another designer from another team also because it also relates to that team. We did another sync together, and plan that the next meeting, all of us will come with some ideas and discuss it.

It goes on like that. Everyone contributes to their ideas. We agree on the direction and move forward. Honestly, mots of the time, there are no big changes when brainstorming with them. The new design is 70% similar to the original that I proposed. but when involving them in the early stage of the process, I don’t convince them again. No surprise, not a big concern.

Maybe, asking for feedback is just a way to convince people. and the value at Caoursell makes sense

“Over communication is better than under communication”

It’s doesn’t mean that we have to alk more, it’s about sharing more, share often, get people envolve earlier in the process.

That’s where collaboration becomes seamless.

[trongnguyenco]

Designer’s job is both doing and thinking

For enthusiastic designers who are being frustrated about their works.

Wireframe, user flow, UI,… all deliverable of the designer. They are the results of our hard work. What if one day you don’t have anything to deliver? It happens very often on a product team, what would you feel?

Do you feel frustrated? Do you feel useless? Do you feel that you are redundant to the team and you would be…fired?

If your answer is yes. Yeah! You’re not alone. You get me.

I felt very frustrated when I see the roadmap of my team that there are not many things for me to do work in the next three months, not many things to deliver.

Then I shared with my design manager about it got wisdom:

“Designer’s job is not only doing, but it’s also doing”

That advice reminds me of the designer’s job: solving problems. To solve problems, we need to know what the right problems are. I know it, we have to understand people how’s using our product. And the understanding just comes from talking and listing to them. That’s the time we nee dot do user research. And we need lots of time to plan for it.

We also need time to step back and think about what do we want to do for our product.

Designers are both doers and thinkers. And it’s our job.

So next time when you don’t see you have enough things to deliver, it’s a good time for you to prepare for the next leap.

[trongnguyenco]

Find a way to raise your voice

Great advice from my manager for a shy introvert designer.

Today I have a tough conversation with my head of product design.  Yes, it’s about the performance review.

I don’t believe that I’ve stayed at Carousell for almost one year. I still remember how shy I was at the first meeting on the first day. It was a weekly product sync with 20 people. All I could say about my self for the self-introduction is “My name is Trong, I’m from Vietnam”.

That was my introduction.

And now, after one year. I’m almost still the same.

Time flies very fast.

My head of product design is a kind manager. He always wants to push positive energy toward us, always nice when giving feedbacks and very humble. I wrote a long note about what I admire and list all things I could learn from him, but it’s still a secret note, not public yet.

Today’s performance review, it supposes to be serious, but it was not. Maybe I expected it’s not serious. It’s very awkward for a 1-1 meeting, but it’s good to be awkward, can be even more. Because in that meeting, both of us stay vulnerable to get and discuss feedback. And he gave very honest feedback about my weakness - which I can predict: Communication.

Communication is my Achilles heel. I’m not good at communication, especially in spoking. I’m a shy introvert designer.

At the beginning, I thought it because of my language problem (English isn’t my mother language, you can see it in this article). But he said it was not. My language is fine. I can write, I can speak, people can understand me.

I’m bad at communication because of the fear of judgment from other people. The fear to be a designer with bad English skill. Many voices whisper inside my head: “What are you talking? I don’t understand”, “You’re not food enough”,… I let the fear beat me, badly.

After a long time struggling with the fear, I stepped back and thought about it. Around me, many people are like me. They’re from different countries where English isn’t their mother language: Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia,…

Sometimes, I don’t understand what’re they talking about. They might have the same thought about me. Then I realize that many people are just like me. Their English isn’t perfect. And they have their fear of judgment. I’m not the only one.

So I say to myself, and my manager always encourages me, to be more confident. Or better advise from him:

“Find the way to raise your voice”

Speaking isn’t the only way, writing is equally important. Find changes to raise your voice: via slack, email or document. Just pick one medium that works for you. You don’t have to be perfect in everything.

Communication is bigger than words.

[trongnguyenco]

Ugly truths about design systems

Design system (DS) is not a temporary trend, it has many benefits to the organization and the product. But what else?

If you google “Design system”, there will be unlimited articles about why we should have a design system. Giant companies build their DS and share it to the world, Airbnb, IBM,  Shopify,…

After spending a year on building DS at Carousell, here are what I’m facing when building it.

We are feeding the scale monster

Consistency across the product and organization is the most important benefit of building a DS. We spend lots of time to build it. Not only designers, developers, PM, but it’s also the whole company. We spend time to create something that we can use everywhere in any cases.

It’s called design for scale.

But one solution can’t fit all. It’s the same for DS.

We don’t know what we don’t know. We’re unclear about new problems we will face. Some new problems need new approaches. Anh DS doesn’t always fit.

I don’t like the phrase “Design for scale”. When we feed the scale monster, we will lose flexibility and optimization. We need the flexibility to adapt to the fast-changing worlds. We go global but need to localize.

Treat DS as a product is a lie

“Treat DS as a product” means to continue updating, iterating like a product. But it’s a lie.

As a startup, we’re fighting every day to alive. We use all of our resources to focus on the product, to create new features, to improve and optimize for a better product. Who cares about updating a “product” that’s not so real like DS?

In a big organization, the product team is divided into different teams. And the product stays consistent due to the DS.

Different teams solve different problems. That’s why one component works for this team but not fo the other. That’s the time, designers sit together to discuss the change. But we also need engineers to be involved. But they are busy with their task, their OKRs which building DS isn’t included. Even updating DS is in their OKRs, we are not sure that they want to do it, because we all agreed that was how the component works.

Changes are a reality, we always need to change, DS either.

That to say envolving and sharing why we should update the DS is very important.

DS is a strick grammar

Engineers will always ask us to use the components that were already built. There’s no wrong with that, their goals make it work and easy to maintain. They don’t like any things that are inconsistent and dirty code.

Designers will use what we have on DS for their designs. Sometime, the built components just can’t solve the problems. It’s good to work under constraint. But just after a big project, the product just goes wrong. You see so many things can be done better with some small changes. But when we want to change, the whole product will be impacted. We have a stack of dependencies on each design.

By locking design into a system, it’s very hard to make something fast. And with a strict grammar system, we have less freedom to create something fun and surprised. When it’s not fun, it’s not design anymore.

[trongnguyenco]

Can’t get good ideas? Come up with some bad ones

It’s your brain trying to protect you from harm, from coming up with ideas that is embarrassing and stupid and could cause you to suffer pain. The way you shut off is by forcing the brain to come up with bad ideas.”

I stumbled upon that quote from the book “Tool of Titans” by Tim Ferriss (great book btw)

“Can’t get good ideas? Come up with some bad ones”

I’ve never read it before. I had just read a similar one: “If you want to have good ideas, generate a lot of ideas”

It’s great advice, but many time, I can’t come up with enough ideas.

With the new advice, it adds an emotion about generosity when finding ideas that make me feel safe and confident with any idea I came up with.

We are afraid of bad ideas, of course, we were trained to delivery good ideas to the world, otherwise, the world would judge us as not a good designer.

“What if you just can’t come up with 10 ideas? Here’s the magic: If you can’t come up with 10 ideas, come up with 20 ideas. You are putting too much pressure on yourself. Perfection is the enemy of the idea muscle.

Seth Godin has the same ideas about it:

“If you generate enough bad ideas, a few good ones tend to show up. So the goal isn’t to get good ideas, the goal is to get back ideas. Because once you get enough bad ideas, some good ones have to show up”

James - the interviewee, recommends the habit of writing down 10 ideas each day. The idea is for developing your idea muscle and confidence for creativity. So regular practice is more important than the topic.

Sample of James’s “daily 10”

“10 old ideas I can make new

10 ridiculous things I would invent (e.g., the smart toilet)

10 books I can write (The Choose Yourself Guide to an Alternative Education, etc).

10 business ideas for Google/Amazon/Twitter/etc.

10 people I can send ideas to

10 podcast ideas or videos I can shoot (e.g., Lunch with James, a video podcast where I just have lunch with people over Skype and we chat)

10 industries where I can remove the middleman

10 things I disagree with that everyone else assumes is a religion (college, homeownership, voting, doctors, etc.)

10 ways to take old posts of mine and make books out of them

10 people I want to be friends with (then figure out the first step to contact them)

10 things I learned yesterday

10 things I can do differently today

10 ways I can save time

I started to practice this exercise every day. I have around one hour on the train from the office to my room. I have time to train my ideas muscle.

[trongnguyenco]

Why I choose Tumblr?

I’m a huge fan of Tumblr, not only for blogging but also their flexibility and simplicity on creating your blogs, websites.

There are so many choices out there to create a website or blog. Wordpress is the most popular and common, many other good services like Webflow, Tilda, Squarespace, Simplice,… with beautiful templates.

Wordpress is too complicated for me. Some people (engineers) say it’s very easy, but not for me. How to set up the project, how to run it on local to work with, how to upload to a host to go live? and many other questions. Come on man, I’m a designer who knows only CSS and HTML.

How about other services? They are great: beautiful templates, easy to use, no code required to create a blog or website. But the most important thing is money, we have to pay a monthly fee.

I don’t want to pay money for personal and fun stuff. Not for now. Honestly, I used to use Tilda to create my first portfolio. It’s a beautiful website, but I hate the footer with Tilda logo! We couldn’t remove it with a free package. But from the time I found what we can do with Tumblr, I don’t care about those services anymore.

Here are 5 reasons why I fall in love with Tumblr on creating websites and blogging.

1. It’s free

You can create any blog as you want, a lot of free themes that we can install with one click. Changing a theme is easy like changing clothes.

And you can post as many articles, many photos as you want without worries about the bandwidth or host fee.

Everyone loves anything that’s free.

2. Custom HTML and CSS

This is one of the main reasons why I chose Tumblr.

If you know the basic HTML and CSS, you will love it too. I don’t like the default style of free Tumblr theme, and I always want to change it. I customized the whole UI fo this blog, this is the original theme. Do you believe that? I kept all the skeleton of a Tumblr blog structure and changed only the CSS and HTML.

You can also remove all the code and insert your HTML to create your landing page. I created many landing pages when applying for a job, like 6 reasons for Carousell should hire me, or my portfolio

3. Custom your domain

By default, you will have your website but followed by .tumblr.com. It’s not a beautiful URL. For example myblog.tumblr.com. With Tumblr, you can change to your dream domain.

But first, you have to buy your domain, Godaddy is a popular one, then you can replace Tumblr domain with that domain.

Now you have a completed website with your beautiful domain, mine is trongnguye.co

If you use other services like Tilda, Simplice,… you have to pay a monthly fee to a custom domain. It’s the biggest barrier for me to use them.

4. Create many blogs and websites as you want

With a free account, you can create a dozen or even a hundred website.

I owned many blogs, most of them are just for fun. For some blogs, I created them, then removed their base code and put my HTML and CSS to make custom websites. It doesn’t have a be only a blog.

5. Download all posts to your machine

One day, if you don’t want to use Tumblr anymore or you want to blog switch to another platform like Wordpress, what would you do?

You can download all the old posts on Tumblr, save it on your computer or upload them to your new blog.

This is a very small feature but I can feel how well they treat their users, their community.

By adding this feature, they want to say “If you don’t like Tumblr, you can use other websites, and we will help to do it.”

How humble and generous Tumblr is! It reminds me of the awesome Basecamp app.

---

This morning I got an email from Tumblr, that they were acquired by Automatic Inc, the company behind Wordpress, wooCommerce. I don’t like any news relates to acquisition. With me, it means the owner doesn’t passionate about their product anymore. But Automatic is better for Tumblr than Verizon or Yahoo! I have a belief that Tumblr will be great again.

P/S: But please don’t remove those 5 cool features.

[trongnguyenco]

Why I create a new blog?

My old blog totorodesigns.com is full of dirt. It has been 2 years with no new post. It’s very bad.

Writing is very good for designers nowadays. It’s not for getting a new job, it helps us practice the explaining skill. Write make us think clearer and more important, explore new ideas.

Yeah, but why a new blog?

You can write on your old blog?

When I came to Singapore, my head of product design asked why I didn’t write in English. He knew that I have a blog in Vietnamese - maybe that’s why I was hired.

I wrote it in Vietnamese because I want to share my knowledge with Vietnamese designers and build my audience. My email, after a year of writing, still empty. So share to who?

Now it should be time to write in English. Better for my English level, for better explaining skill, for clearer thinking.

“Write to get ideas, Not to express them”

For beautiful fonts

What?

If you are Vietnamese, you can understand it easily, no many fonts that support Vietnamese.

If we write in English, there’s no problem with the font. You can pick any font that we like to put on our website, as long as it’s support for web.

With Vietnamese, your choice is very limited (I dont’ want to say it’s poor). Mots of fonts don’t support Vietnamese, the most popular language that supports my mother one are  Roboto, Open sans, Noto sans,… They are too popular and too boring. You see them on every website. I get sick with them, with Roboto.

I know that writing is about content. But as a designer, writing is also about the aesthetic. The font we use reflect our taste, our personality.

The fonts I’m choosing to have more personality, both modern and classical.

And I’m very happy with the new font, new blog.

When something doesn’t work, build a new one is better than fix the broken one.

Singapore Sep 11, 2019