On Creativity, Starting Out on My Own, and My 2021 Noonies Nomination

Hey Hackers! I’m Hua and I’m building my startup Typogram.

First of all, a huge thank you to the HackerNoon community and staff for nominating me for a 2021 Noonies award!

I’ve been nominated for HackerNoon Contributor of the Year in Creativity; please do check out the award page and VOTE!

As someone in the design tool industry, I believe that the most exciting technology of the present is variable font because it makes manipulating fonts easy.

Learn more about my thoughts and opinions on design and startup and my journey in the tech industry via the interview below.

1. What do you do and why do you do it? (tell us your story)

I am a designer and entrepreneur based in New York City. For a long time, I worked as a designer and art director. After a fun five years, I decided that while it's fun to create exciting brand direction for big clients, something was missing, I feel like contributing: I wasn’t sharing my knowledge or making design or designing more accessible. At the same time, I met many new, struggling business owners who struggle with creating unique visual branding for their new companies while trying to save money and DIY everything. This inspired and motivated me to start my own company called Typogram, where we build tools that make design more accessible for others.

2. Tell us more about the things you create / write / manage / build!

Sure! A part of running Typogram, we launch a lot of mini tools while working on the main app.

FontDiscovery

I created a series called FontDiscovery, which I publish on Hackernoon and on my own as a newsletter. It is a weekly series that shares a font every week with fun facts and how-to about using it for marketing projects, as well as interesting design ideas and color inspirations.

CodingFont

Coding Font is a new project I recently launched with my co-founder. It is a font preview tool that helps you to find your true love coding font through a tournament-style match-off! This was a fun project that we really enjoyed working on and got a lot of support from the online community.

3. How did you end up on your current career path? Do you like it?

I grew up on the east coast of US. In college, I studied design. When I graduated, I got my first job offer in NYC. NYC is an exciting city for the design field and I worked on everything from tech, art exhibitions, fashion magazines. During this time, I also got very interested in the tech side of design, like font creation and coding. To satisfy my curiosity, I enrolled in a typeface design program at the Cooper Union, where I got a chance to learn everything about fonts and design from the best of the best. I also taught myself web development. I learned a lot during this time, but all of these skills also made me think more about what I truly want to create. After many long walks, I realized there are four things I am passionate about: design, creativity, tech, and entrepreneurship. I also met my phenomenal co-founder and we started working on projects together, eventually, we decide to create our own design and tech company and build cool things that empower others.

4. What tech are you most excited or passionate about right now and why?

I’m most passionate about variable font right now. It allows someone to manipulate fonts more easily and for non-designers, that can be incredibly helpful!

5. What tech are you most worried about right now and why?

Face ID and Touch ID. I’m worried about these data becoming sold and bought. This keeps me awake and at night sometimes and I definitely don’t have Face ID enabled for all of my apps.

6. If we gave you 10 million dollars to invest in something today, what would you invest in and why?

I would invest in my co-founder’s future companies. My co-founder is the most talented person I know, whatever she does, she will be successful! I’m 100% sure! I would also invest in health food product/subscription services, like (microgreens, collagen, and konjac production and processing). Why? Because we can all use tastier, healthier foods and snacks at lower prices.

7. What are you currently learning?

I’m currently learning about writing. It’s not something that comes naturally to me and I still have lots to improve. It’s also about building a habit. So, I am learning a lot!

8. What’s the best advice you’ve ever given someone?

Less is more - don’t cramp the landing page/ resume/slides/research posters with paragraphs of text. When people read and look at things, their eyes also need “breathing space.” Having lots of space to look at and take in information help people understand what you are trying to say.

9. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Just take a day (days) off. I get anxious easily and have the toxic hustle culture “I must work hard or I’m worthless” mentality stuck in my head. Over time this has been bad for my physical and mental health. Also, I notice that working continuously for a long period of time actually harms my productivity. I lose focus over time and the quality of my work decreases. So, nowadays, I take at least a day off when I need to. I’m still working on detoxing the hustle culture mentality.

10. Please give us the links to all your relevant social media profiles so we can use them to promote this interview! (Twitter and LinkedIn would be a huge plus)

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HuaTweets

11. Would you also be interested in joining us on the HackerNoon podcast? If so, what would you like to chat about?

Would love to! Design, Fonts, Startup, Creativity

About HackerNoon’s 2021 Noonie Awards

The annual Noonie Awards celebrate the best and brightest of the tech industry, bringing together all who are making the Internet and the world of tech what it is today. Please be sure to check out our award categories, nominate, and vote for the people and companies who you think are making the biggest impact on the tech industry today.

The 2021 Noonies are sponsored by: bybit, Dottech Domains, and Avast. Thank you so much to these sponsors who are helping us celebrate the accomplishments of all our nominees.