Collecting materials, comparing and contrasting before drawing

Introducing Vietnamese Culture

Nguyen Minh Ngoc is an alumnus of the Hanoi Foreign Trade University. In 2020, the 9X young man has just graduated from Lasalle College of the Arts - Singapore.

Minh Ngoc said: “I use mobile phones and Instagram a lot, and I have seen people, especially young people, using emoji as a symbolic language of the new era. But when I want to talk about Vietnam, I ran out of "vocabulary". That made me very confused.”

Currently, the emoji list has only one symbol related to Vietnam, which is the National flag. Therefore, the 9X young man wanted to create more Vietnamese marks in the global emoji linguistic treasure.

“Through emoji, I want to introduce Vietnamese culture to international friends. Since then, the “Nhỏ to Việt Nam project” was born with the aim of introducing Vietnamese culture through emoji. The project opened with the group of emoji describing 54 brotherly ethnic groups.

Costumes are the features that identifies ethnic groups

Accessing the link http://instagram.com/nhoto.vietnam, we can see the images of 54 ethnic groups, each consisting of a man and a woman, appearing in typical traditional costumes. In addition to the main distribution area, population size, ethnic languages, interesting and unique details of the ethnic groups are also updated. In just a short time, the project has attracted more than 8,500 followers.

The unique difference of the emoji describing 54 ethnic groups is find and complete the data. There were many documents that were easy to find and used to compare such as the Kinh, Cham, and Khmer groups. But there are also ethnic groups with limited materials such as O Du, Khang ...

“Moreover, being easily mistaken about materials of the images of one ethnic group with the information of another is a very common issue. Therefore, that motivates me to try to make thorough study, and compare them with other materials”, said the 9X young man.

Difficulties stacking up over difficulties; besides the materials, drawing emoji is very time-consuming. During four months of hard work, finally, a total of 108 emoji were officially released in August 2020. When they were "released", Nguyen Minh Ngoc asked viewers for feedbacks and opinions on the project, hoping to make the emoji more complete and accurate.

Sending wishes

From his acquired knowledge, the 9X Hanoi young man had the opportunity to deepen and understand more about the national culture. For example, the Cha-pi belongs to the Ra Glai people. Currently in Vietnam, only Mr. Chamalea Au knows how to make it. In addition, the Pa Then people have maintained their mysterious fire dance festival for many years.

Therefore, the project is not only made up of general knowledge about the area of distribution, population size, and ethnic languages. These are also the unique characteristics of each ethnic group, various interesting things that establish the identity of each ethnic group.

Sharing about his next steps, the Hanoi young man said: “The first part of 54 ethnic groups has been completed. In the next phase, the project would express the unique cuisines, destinations, occupations and musical instruments in Vietnam”. Through emoji, the project would convey cultural values to viewers. It was estimated that the 9X young man had design hundreds of emoji and it took 1-2 years to complete the “Nhỏ to Việt Nam” project.

During that long journey, Hue was a unique choice with many cultural values, landscapes and excellent cuisine.

Nguyen Minh Ngoc informed: "When I do the sequels of Nhỏ to Việt Nam project, surely Hue with the food and famous landscapes would be included". In addition to Hue, the project's content will depict the diverse cultures of many provinces, taking viewers on "the ride" to different regions of Vietnam through colorful emoji.

In addition to the first part of the Nhỏ to Việt Nam project, Nguyen Minh Ngoc also released the COVID – 19 Alphabets. In which, each letter is a small sketch containing information related to the pandemic, spreading the knowledge, the spirit of preventing and fighting against COVID-19 in a graphic designer's very own way. The Alphabets have been posted on the website behance.net with the name COVID-19 Recap in Letters.

Story: Mai Hue - Image: Provided by Minh Ngoc