Style combination · Contrasts

Seoul Independent Graphic Design × Neo-Swiss Revival

The Seoul studios share Neo-Swiss's Dutch and Swiss roots (Mevis & Van Deursen, Jude Kang's studies in Switzerland, Favorit Hangul extending the Swiss foundry Dinamo's Favorit), but Neo-Swiss sets one Latin grotesque flush left on a modular grid, while the Seoul studios centre their text, repeat circles and letters as objects, and make Hangul, reshaped and set beside Latin, the main material.

From the research on Seoul Independent Graphic Design (Small-Studio Scene)

Mix them and make something Seoul Independent Graphic Design Neo-Swiss Revival

A poster with oversized black “Open Field” lettering and small event details on an off-white background. Below the title, a three-column grid contains blue, pink, orange, black and gray circles, semicircles and triangles. — AI-generated by Stylogeny from the recipe below, and checked against it: the type from Neo-Swiss Revival, the form from Seoul Independent Graphic Design, the composition from Neo-Swiss Revival. Not a real or historical work.

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.

Seoul Independent Graphic Design (Small-Studio Scene) Neo-Swiss Revival

Type from Neo-Swiss Revival: Grotesque & neo-grotesque
Type as image
Colour from Seoul Independent Graphic Design: Monochrome
Limited spot colours
Form from Seoul Independent Graphic Design: Geometric primitives
Non-representational
Composition from Neo-Swiss Revival: Modular grid
Generous white space
Surface from Seoul Independent Graphic Design: Flat

The type

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

Display · Neo-Swiss Revival

Index

Inter Tight, standing in for Neue Haas Grotesk (Christian Schwartz revival)

Text · Seoul Independent Graphic Design

Graphic design by Seoul's small, self-run studios, which from about 2005 chose to stay small. They design for low-budget culture (exhibitions, festivals, humanities books) and for their own imprints and journals. Typography carries the work: Hangul is reshaped within or beyond its syllable blocks, set beside Latin as one system and enlarged into the picture. Layouts are often centred, in one colour, with circles, repetition and letters treated as objects. Runs are short, in offset, risograph or silkscreen.

Zen Kaku Gothic New; Seoul Independent Graphic Design used Favorit Hangul (Yoon Mingoo with Dinamo, 2019), a Hangul companion to Dinamo's Latin Favorit, part of the type industry's turn to multi-script families and Protoform, Sulki & Min's first Korean font family, drawn by the designers themselves

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Seoul Independent Graphic Design, with a counter-accent from Neo-Swiss Revival. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Seoul Independent Graphic Design (Small-Studio Scene) Neo-Swiss Revival

#f3f1ec ground · 36%
#111111 ink · 14%
#2448d8 accent · 18%
#ff4a1c accent · 14%
#ff5aa5 accent · 10%
#a7a49c accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f3f1ec;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #2448d8;
  --accent-2: #ff4a1c;
  --accent-3: #ff5aa5;
  --accent-4: #a7a49c;
  --font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Zen Kaku Gothic New", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Seoul Independent Graphic Design (Small-Studio Scene): These are living, named designers and studios, so never attribute a generated poster or book to Sulki & Min, Everyday Practice or any other studio, and never prompt an image model with their names. Image models often produce pseudo-Hangul: have every Hangul word written or checked by a Korean reader, or leave the text out. Do not paste hanbok, dancheong patterns or a taegeuk emblem on as decoration to signal 'Korean'; where the studios touch such ideas (Sulki & Min's patterns on Hangul vowels and yin-yang), they work them out through the structure of the letters. Choi Sung Min warns that the pressure on Korean designers to find a 'true self' is a problematic Orientalism, and this scene works through type and concept, not national motifs.

The two styles

2005–present · East Asia Seoul Independent Graphic Design (Small-Studio Scene) Graphic design by Seoul's small, self-run studios, which from about 2005 chose to stay small. They design for low-budget culture (exhibitions, festivals, humanities books) and for their own imprints and journals. Typography carries the work: Hangul is reshaped within or beyond its syllable blocks, set beside Latin as one system and enlarged into the picture. Layouts are often centred, in one colour, with circles, repetition and letters treated as objects. Runs are short, in offset, risograph or silkscreen.

A typographic arts poster features enormous black words “New” and “Now” stacked on an off-white background divided by thin grid lines. Orange-red, blue and pale gray rectangular fields sit below, alongside smaller exhibition details and the words “Art Ideas People Today.”

2005–present · Global / networked, Central Europe, Western Europe Neo-Swiss Revival A contemporary revival of the International Typographic Style, fuelled by digital re-releases of neo-grotesques and by studios such as Experimental Jetset and Norm: modular grids, flush-left grotesque type, huge tightly set headlines and flat fields of black, white and one signal colour. It treats Swiss modernism as a living toolkit for posters, identities and the responsive web, sometimes with a knowing, citational wink.