Meet Khuong, an aspiring typographer and lover of facial hair. When he's not busy being a student at Cal State Fullerton, playing bass in Rockharbor's worship band, and chowing down on (delectable) Mexican tacos from the Rigoberto's taco truck, you can find Khuong burrowed into his notebook, doodling up a storm. Because he's awesome and because he's my cousin and is therefore obligated, Khuong agreed to answer a few of my pressing questions.
The following are just snippets of his handiwork. Oh, he also made the nifty header at the top of this here blog. For your viewing pleasure, check out more of Khuong's typography business at:
How and why did you get into typography?
I got into typography probably around high school. Instead of doodling your basic stuff, I was always drawing out letters, not that they were any good, but it sparked up my fascination with type. I think I liked so much because there was a literal meaning behind the message trying to be communicated. Rather than hoping someone would understand what I was trying to get across, words and letters conveyed a message in itself and the font utilized affected its connotation, making the uninteresting actually visually appealing.
What inspires you?
I love my Pinterest boards because I feel we’re in a time where curation and style is infinitely invaluable. Nowadays, anyone can be a designer, the difference lies with the tastefulness, knowing where to begin and when to stop. If you follow the right people on Pinterest, it’s an endless library of visuals you can use for research affixed to what it is you like, your own personal filter. But besides social media, I find inspiration in a lot of things from vintage signs, hand drawn illustrations and lettering, really clean editorial/magazine layouts, clever logos, and basically anything retro, I’m all about it for the most part. I’ve got my own personal designers I look up to and they exemplify my style and the work I want to do as of now I love Dan Cassaro’s work (he recently did some script from Old Navy’s winter sale) and Simon Walker (AKA Superfurry).
What's the dream?
The ultimate dream career-wise, for myself, is to lean into art direction. I do love production design (making stuff for people) but honestly, I don’t think I want to be doing that say five years from now. I say that because I think, as designers, we begin to emit our own style into our work and so rather than working on a one project at a time, an overall consistent artistic direction seems like the natural next step. Eventually, I’d like to climb ranks from production to junior designer, senior, and art director. I’m from Orange County, so apparel design might be a venture I get into, but we’ll see what happens.
What's your next project?
My next project will hopefully be something I get paid for (please note: humorous tone). Design is fun and awesome, that’s why I do it all time, even when don’t get any pay, but I do want to make this a career and I would love to be able to see if I could make it as a freelance designer.
Any advice?
My advice to any aspiring designers is, know what your style is and do what you like, to the point where you love it, hopefully. There is a discipline in knowing very techy, nerdy stuff, but if you’ve got good ideas, you can find a way to make it happen because you’re a creative. And because you do what you love, you won’t stop making things because if you stop creating, you invite stagnation and that is the death of creativity. KEEP MAKING THINGS. Even when it doesn’t look any good, make a bunch of crap to find that one gem because it’s incredibly worth it. Everyone has their own process and that’s mine. I used to obsess about keeping a tidy notebook and have instances of tasteful sketches that would look amazing, but that was damaging to my own creativity because I was afraid that nothing I made would ever be good enough. Fear of failure is not acceptable, because once you flop you’ll know what’s bad so you can make good stuff. Go out there do what you do, and after a lot of hard work I assure you’ll have that awesome looking sketchbook (after a lot really bad ones) but that’s okay because you’re not afraid of failure and you know what works and doesn’t. So go, work hard, and don’t throw up.
***Khuong recently became lead designer for Rockharbor Church's main campus! Three cheers for him!
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