Style combination · Pairs well

Cyworld Minihompy × Newtro

Two Korean nostalgia currents: pair a framed minihompy layout with newtro's flat hand-lettered emblems for a 2000s throwback.

From the research on Cyworld Minihompy & Minimi (Korean Mini-Homepage Culture)

Mix them and make something Cyworld Minihompy Newtro

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Cyworld Minihompy, their arrangement from Cyworld Minihompy, the finish from Newtro. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Cyworld Minihompy & Minimi (Korean Mini-Homepage Culture) Newtro (Korean New-Retro)

Type from Newtro: Hand-lettering
Eclectic mixing
Colour from Newtro: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from Cyworld Minihompy: Stylised figuration
Rectilinear
Composition from Cyworld Minihompy: Framed panels
Column grid
Surface from Newtro: Flat

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Newtro

Hello

Kaushan Script, standing in for Woowa Brothers' Euljiro (2019) and Euljiro 10 Years Later (2020), free Hangul fonts drawn from Euljiro signboard brush lettering

Text · Cyworld Minihompy

The personal mini-homepage of Korea's Cyworld: one fixed, framed template that every user decorated item by item with a paid currency of acorns (dotori). A title bar; a left column with profile photo, mood line and friend list; in the centre the miniroom, a small isometric room of bought pixel furniture where a small pixel-style avatar (the minimi) lives; a right-hand menu of tabs; and a visitor counter. Selfies, diary entries, guestbook notes and wistful captions made it, in Korean press words, the nation's collective diary and photo album.

Inter; Cyworld Minihompy used Gulim (굴림), the default Korean Windows system face of Korean web pages and Dotum (돋움), the companion Korean system sans

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Newtro, with a counter-accent from Cyworld Minihompy. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Cyworld Minihompy & Minimi (Korean Mini-Homepage Culture) Newtro (Korean New-Retro)

#f4ecd8 ground · 36%
#1c1c1c ink · 14%
#f0b929 accent · 18%
#f58220 accent · 14%
#d7322b accent · 10%
#a9cfe8 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4ecd8;
  --ink: #1c1c1c;
  --accent-1: #f0b929;
  --accent-2: #f58220;
  --accent-3: #d7322b;
  --accent-4: #a9cfe8;
  --font-display: "Kaushan Script", cursive;
  --font-text: "Inter", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Cyworld Minihompy & Minimi (Korean Mini-Homepage Culture): Cyworld, minihompy and minimi are trade names of a company that has relaunched the service: draw new avatars, rooms and frames rather than copying Cyworld's own items, logo or interface art. Real minihompys hold private people's selfies, diaries and comments; do not reproduce or scrape them as examples. The palette is an evocation of the pastel skins and light frames, not a sourced record of Cyworld's interface colours; the orange is unsourced.

Newtro (Korean New-Retro): Newtro revives a firm's own archive: for any other client draw on that client's history, not Jinro's toad or Gompyo's bear, which their owners guard. In 2023 the first cans of 7Bräu's Daepyo Wheat Beer, which kept Gompyo's colour scheme and a bear, drew Daehan Flour Mills' warning that copying the brand's design could be unfair competition, and 7Bräu promised a redesign with a tiger. Keep Hangul and Hanja correct and legible, and do not swap in Japanese Shōwa-retro or colonial-era 'Gyeongseong' imagery: a 2018 JoongAng Ilbo column called restaurants that mix Japanese food with Gyeongseong nostalgia 'tasteless', since those who lived through the occupation remember it as 'shameful and painful'.

The two styles

2001–2015 · East Asia Cyworld Minihompy & Minimi (Korean Mini-Homepage Culture) The personal mini-homepage of Korea's Cyworld: one fixed, framed template that every user decorated item by item with a paid currency of acorns (dotori). A title bar; a left column with profile photo, mood line and friend list; in the centre the miniroom, a small isometric room of bought pixel furniture where a small pixel-style avatar (the minimi) lives; a right-hand menu of tabs; and a visitor counter. Selfies, diary entries, guestbook notes and wistful captions made it, in Korean press words, the nation's collective diary and photo album.

A smiling cartoon tiger wearing a white cap holds a bottle of milk beneath large blue Korean lettering. Mountains, farms, wheat stalks, flower motifs and a small cow emblem fill an ornate blue, red and cream border.

2017–present · East Asia Newtro (Korean New-Retro) A South Korean branding trend, named 'Going New-tro' in Seoul National University's Trend Korea 2019 (October 2018), in which heritage firms reissue their own postwar to 1990s labels, trademarks and mascots, polished for young buyers. Jinro's sky-blue bottle and toad label (2019) and Gompyo flour's white bear on beer cans (2020) set the look: centred labels and badges, two or three flat colours on pale grounds, brush, cursive or hand-drawn logotypes, often Hanja with Hangul beside them, and a cartoon mascot as hero. Its source is the recent consumer past, reinterpreted, not reproduced.