As you might imagine, the designer’s creative process for this project began with a walk through the streets. “While walking through Saigon, I took photos of various cut-out signs for design treatment analysis,” says Nguyện. And then, “after conducting a research on the need for typefaces and their role in street life, I created a brief,” he continues. He delved further into the typeface field and set himself the goal of using the typeface in public spaces, staying close to its roots. So it was crucial to look at designs related to traffic and streets, specifically case studies of “typefaces used in American traffic signs.” The designer sought ways to balance his visual concept with functionality and legibility; a typeface that served local communities and brought life to public spaces.

A chance for him to revisit some nostalgic cutting skills from school, these basic techniques “formed the basis for the principle of Sans-Phố’s treatment”, with a rough cutting line considered “DNA for structuring the stroke”. Cleverly designed to reuse modules, the full typeset is created by merging special characters and then reassembling their shapes in a careful collage. The final part of the process for Nguyện was to bring his paper shapes into the digital world and define the metrical strokes of the typefaces, making some visual adjustments to determine the thickness of his playful upper and lower case letters.

The resulting letterforms for Sans Phố were designed specifically for the Vietnamese language and feature only one style: condensed bold. A point of functionality for use on street signs and public spaces, where a lot of information often needs to be crammed into a small space, this distinctive set style aims to “give people a sense of the hustle and bustle of the streets of Vietnam”. The typeface’s name: Sans-Phố can be interpreted as “‘Sans’ ​​in ‘Sans-serif’ and ‘Phố’ meaning ‘Vietnamese street’. Sans-Phố also rhymes with the term ‘bước sang phố’ in Vietnamese, which means ‘across the street’”, the designer explains.

Currently, Sans-Phố is used as the official typeface for the Saigon Artist Fair in Ho Chi Minh City (an arts and crafts market) and for a community street vendor exhibition in Da Nang. “It’s incredibly satisfying to see how well Sans-Phố has been received,” concludes Nguyện. “With all of this positive feedback, I’m confident that Sans-Phố will be used in a way that reflects the community-focused goals I set out in my original typeface design brief.”