Sleek is a Vietnamese script typeface family rooted in the energetic handwriting of mid-20th century Vietnamese publications. The project began with a personal collection of vintage materials — music sheets, satirical newspapers, comic manuals, and maps — where hand-lettered type functioned not as decoration, but as complete typographic systems. An early touchstone was the lettering of artist Đức Khánh in Văn Nghệ Tiền Phong newspaper: fast-moving strokes drawn to accompany satirical illustrations, exuding confidence, speed, and an impromptu inky spirit. From there, the project expanded into a broader study of mid-century Vietnamese commercial handwriting, identifying the shared qualities worth translating into a new system: angular motion, inky texture, and the feeling of a pen moving quickly across the page.
The letterforms are reinterpreted through a contemporary design lens — solid terminal shapes, ink traps, and deliberate structural choices that bring the spontaneous energy of the source material into a disciplined digital system.
The family comprises three styles: Italic Regular, Italic Thin, and Upright Thin — an unconventional expansion built around personality and style rather than a traditional weight axis. Developing the upright after the italics reversed the typical workflow, but allowed the same inky DNA to find a new structural expression.