Sans-Phố Display Typeface is inspired by several Vietnamese hand-crafted signages that are commonly found in public locations around Vietnam. This project strives to conserve the cultural values of Vietnamese streets by combining cuisine, art, and Vietnamese humans. Sans-Phố can be interpreted, as “Sans” in “Sans-serif” and “Phố” means “Vietnamese Street”. “Sans-Phố” also rhymes with the term “bước – sang – phố”, which means “crossing the street”. To me, crossing the street in Vietnam can be said to be “a sport” that is both adventurous and funny, while Vietnamese people are extremely professional athletes with a lot of personality. Sans-Phố has one style font – Condensed Bold, as street signs have a lot of textual content, which is condensed in a certain space. Following my research about the impacts of type design on street signage, it takes people, who join in traffic, less than a second to recognize and take the information as fast as possible from far away. Therefore, the font on street signs should be both readable and legible; my responsibility in this project is to balance the visual concept and the functionality of a typeface. The typeface is perfectly suitable for titles and headings; specially designed for the Vietnamese language. Ligatures were developed based on the compound consonants in the Vietnamese language, along with a variety of alternates, to express the richness of distinctive features in Vietnamese words and give people the feeling of the bustle and hustle of Vietnam’s streets.

Sans-Phố Display Typeface is my graduation project at University, as well as my first time working on Type Design.

Project “Sans-Phố Display Typeface” was featured in Best of Behance and Typography of Graphic Design on Behance. So far, Sans-Phố has already been refined and released with 2 licenses: trial & commercial.