Design As a Window into New Cultures: Typographic Exploration in Hangul

“Exploration of Hangul” image courtesy of UCD Design Museum

Just as Seoul, Korea is named the “World Design Capital” for 2010, the Design Museum at UC Davis brings us “Typographic exploration in Hangul”. A body of work by two Korean designers Hyunju Lee and Phil Choo exploring the typographic roots of Hangul, the native script of Korea. Focusing on the form of the letters, the designers’ breakdown the linguistic barrier and lets the audience glimpse into the lifestyle of present day Korea.

Rather than focusing on the whole exhibition, I have chosen one piece specifically; the first piece viewed while walking into the museum, and the piece that really sets the tone for the rest of the collection. This piece gives us a window into contemporary Korean culture as it is grapples with the idea of self identity as nation partitioned and sectioned off from its Northern counterpart.

“Hangauri” by Hyunju Lee 2009 is an inject print on canvas. It depicts a traditional Korean circle folk dance done by intricately costumed women in the countryside during early August (Design Museum UC Davis). Set on a primarily grey background which graduates to yellow at a corner, we see 8 concentric rings made out of one Hangul letter, a consonant, partly overlapped and repeated many times. When looked at from far away, one is reminded of delicate embroidery as each colorful letter is raised from its dull background like a stitch from cloth. Lee demonstrates the ideas of old and new in Korea by using an electronic medium to do work traditionally done by human hand.

Using vibrant flat color she relays the purity and innocence of a dance untouched by time. However, time is distorted for the viewer due to Lee's choice of canvas shape, an octagon. A shape synonymous with the modern iconic “STOP” sign, but also the number 8 in the 14^th century representing the eight-province system of Korea as a whole (allexperts.com). Lee's duality on the subject of time echos that of Korea's. Lastly, even with the correct use of negative space, cropping and scale the piece seems “heavy” or unbalanced just like…you guessed it... modern day Korea.