Style combination · Pairs well
Out-of-Square Hangul Typography × Roman-like Thai Typography
Both modernise an Asian script by dropping a defining convention, the square cell in Hangul and the head loop in Thai; set them together for a pan-Asian modern type specimen or festival identity.
Mix them and make something Out-of-Square Hangul Typography Roman-like Thai Typography
01
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.
Out-of-Square Hangul Typography Roman-like Thai Typography (modern loopless Thai)
- Type from Roman-like Thai Typography
- Colour from Out-of-Square Hangul Typography
- Form from Out-of-Square Hangul Typography
- Composition from Roman-like Thai Typography
- Surface from Out-of-Square Hangul Typography
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Roman-like Thai Typography
Index
Inter Tight, standing in for Helvetica, the Latin model for Manoptica
Text · Out-of-Square Hangul Typography
A Korean typographic movement that frees Hangul from the equal square in which metal and photo type had always set each syllable. Beginning with Ahn Sang-soo's 1985 typeface, jamo keep fixed sizes so syllables vary in height and lines hang from a shared top edge; letters are built from circle, dot and straight stroke, and in posters and the magazine Bogoseo/Bogoseo they are enlarged until they become the picture.
Jost; Out-of-Square Hangul Typography used Ahn Sang-soo typeface and Isang-che, Mir-che and Mano-che
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Out-of-Square Hangul Typography, with a counter-accent from Roman-like Thai Typography. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Out-of-Square Hangul Typography Roman-like Thai Typography (modern loopless Thai)
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#f5f3eeground · 36% -
#111111ink · 14% -
#f2c12eaccent · 18% -
#d7261eaccent · 14% -
#1f4fa0accent · 10% -
#0a7a4faccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f5f3ee;
--ink: #111111;
--accent-1: #f2c12e;
--accent-2: #d7261e;
--accent-3: #1f4fa0;
--accent-4: #0a7a4f;
--font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Roman-like Thai Typography (modern loopless Thai): Loopless Thai is contested inside Thailand. Researchers such as Rachapoom Punsongserm find it harder to read in small, bold or justified body text and less legible across viewing distances than a Thai universal-design face, with letters that can be taken for Latin (พ.ร.บ. can read as W.S.U.), so keep it mostly to display sizes and set body, legal and small interface text in a looped face. Critics also see it as eroding the looped forms that mark Thai identity, and Cadson Demak, which popularised it, has since turned back towards looped faces. Have every Thai word checked by a fluent reader, since image models invent or garble Thai letters, and never pass shaped Latin letters off as Thai.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Out-of-Square Hangul Typography
- International Typographic Style Pairs well · Place a modular out-of-square headline on a strict Swiss grid so the hanging, irregular syllables read as deliberate against an ordered page.
- Emigre & Early Digital Type Pairs well · Both turned a constructed alphabet into a magazine laboratory in the 1980s; set an Emigre-era Latin face beside an out-of-square Hangul face for a bilingual experimental spread.
- Chaekgeori & Minhwa Screen Painting Pairs well · Munjado builds a character from pictures and out-of-square Hangul builds pictures from letters; combine them for a Korean identity that spans folk painting and modern type.
- Hong Kong Neon & Beiwei Shop-Sign Lettering Contrasts · Beiwei's chisel-edged, stele-derived brush script is the opposite of monoline geometric jamo; set the two side by side to show calligraphic against constructed East Asian lettering.
- Seoul Independent Graphic Design (Small-Studio Scene) Pairs well · Ahn Sang-soo freed Hangul from the square in 1985, and Sulki & Min have gone further back, to Cho Young-jae's 1976 proposal to restructure Hangul for typewriters, a study they say has rarely been discussed with the depth it deserves, and to the origins of unsquared Hangul; set a hanging, de-squared headline in a centred one-colour poster to join the generations.
- Korean Commercial Calligraphy (Kaelligeurapi) Contrasts · Both free Hangul from the equal square, but Ahn Sang-soo constructs monoline jamo as a reusable typeface while kaelligeurapi writes each word once with the brush; choose between a system and a signature.
- Newtro (Korean New-Retro) Contrasts · Set the modernist, geometric de-squared Hangul of Ahn Sang-soo against newtro's revived brush and cursive label lettering to show two ideas of fashionable Hangul.
- Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho) Contrasts · Ahn Sang-soo's typeface broke exactly the equal square that Myeongjo keeps; run Myeongjo body text under out-of-square headings to stage tradition against experiment.
With Roman-like Thai Typography
- Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering Contrasts · A hand-painted shopfront sign, in looped letters or broad-nib Naris, beside a flat loopless headline shows the shift from the letterer's hand to dry transfer and digital type that Manop Srisomporn himself made.
- Thai Yantra (Yant) Diagrams Contrasts · Yantras keep hand-drawn Khom letters in sacred, protective diagrams; loopless Thai is secular, standardised and commercial, so never use a yantra as a decorative foil for it.
- Contemporary Arabic & Dual-Script Type Design Pairs well · Both redraw a non-Latin script to sit beside a Latin sans as an equal; dual-script Arabic keeps its calligraphic structure, while loopless Thai changes the letter itself, so pair them in a multiscript identity only with native readers for each script.
- Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type Pairs well · A parallel machine-age simplification of another script; both strip traditional details to an even, rational line, and both stayed contested for long reading.