<aside> <img src="/icons/info-alternate_gray.svg" alt="/icons/info-alternate_gray.svg" width="40px" /> Selected student work exhibition of GRAP3000 — Type & Design, an Elective Course of Digital Media Program, School of Communication & Design (RMIT SGS).
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Type & Design is a design course that redefines how students perceive typography; inviting them to see letters not merely as marks on a page, but as expressive forms that shape meaning and experience. The course encourages students to push creative boundaries through typographic experimentation across diverse media, exploring the intersections between type, place, and contemporary urban narratives. It is grounded in a decolonized approach that questions and reimagines traditional, Western-centric models of typographic education.
URL: https://bit.ly/rmittypedesign
Students: Nguyen Phuong Anh (Alicia Nguyen), Chung Bui Tri Tin, Do Le Gia An, Nguyen Tuong Lan Hanh, Yung Mei Kei, Diep Nhu Kim, Nguyen Anh Khoa, Nguyen Ngoc Huyen, Do Hoang Ha Minh, Tran Lam Nam Bao
Lecturer: Giang Nguyen
Semester: 2024—3
<aside> <img src="/icons/book_gray.svg" alt="/icons/book_gray.svg" width="40px" /> Table of Contents
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<aside> <img src="/icons/map-pin_gray.svg" alt="/icons/map-pin_gray.svg" width="40px" /> Location: the plARTform, 54 Ky Con, Saigon Ward
https://www.instagram.com/theplartform.official
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<aside> <img src="/icons/calendar_gray.svg" alt="/icons/calendar_gray.svg" width="40px" /> Date:
Sun 09/11/25–Thu 13/11/25 10:00AM–17:00PM
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Khéo Type Hay Làm plays with the Vietnamese saying “khéo tay hay làm” (lit. “skilled hands make fine work”). The phrase is reimagined as a nod to how letterforms, like any craft, are learned through practice, repetition, and the willingness to get one’s hands dirty. The exhibition invites viewers to sense, touch, and see typography as something made, not merely observed. The following paragraph is a Vietnamese pangram on typography, highlighting the course's focus on craft and hands-on learning: Typography is the art of designing and creatively arranging sentences and letterforms to ensure aesthetics and consistency.
This exhibition features creative projects by students from RMIT Vietnam’s Type & Design course, representing both the Digital Media and Design Studies programs. Following the theme Type & Cities: Saigon, students explored the streets of Ho Chi Minh City to examine how typography inhabits urban space. These ten works uncover typographic stories across the city’s neighborhoods. Each piece reveals how letters shape and reflect Saigon’s identity, from crowded markets to weathered shopfronts where visual language captures the rhythm of everyday life.
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Each work offers a unique view of “place,” told through different media. An transforms the narrow Hẻm 18A Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai **into a speculative typographic museum and maze, while Mei Kei allows players to immerse themselves in the abstract typographic game of Hào Sỹ Phường. Tín presents the Phú Nhuận railway tunnel as a heterotopia of contradictions.
Engaging with local narratives, Huyền proposes an entente between contrasting groups of inhabitants on Phố Nhật, Lê Thánh Tôn. Khoa narrates the story of Nguyễn Duy Trinh Street through five acts — Beginnings, Property, Ambition, Reality, and Hope; while Hạnh illustrates the concept of placemaking through the eyes of a leaf on Hoàng Sa Street.
Some projects take an interpretive angle: Kim likens her impression of Thủ Đức Market to secondhand memories; Bảo contemplates the lives of Vĩnh Hội Apartment residents through the dual times of Chronos and Kairos; Minh reflects on Tân Sơn Nhất Airport as a liminal non-place; while Alicia redefines prosperity through Chợ Thiếc, revealing the interconnectedness embedded within its forms.
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Ranging from tactile installations and printed publications to interactive web arts and games, the works traverse the line between narration and interaction, where stories unfold across both page and screen.
Hosted at the plARTform, a non-traditional exhibition space located within an older urban complex in central Saigon, the exhibition rejects the conventions of the white-cube gallery, offering a setting where typography can exist in dialogue with its physical and cultural surroundings.
