Stylogenyin the style of Newtro (Korean New-Retro)

Postmodern · 2017–present · East Asia

Newtro (Korean New-Retro)

Also known as Newtro, 뉴트로, New-tro, Going New-tro

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.

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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.
AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

Use it with care

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'.

01

How it works

  • Reissue a real brand's own archive: redraw its postwar to 1990s label, logotype and trademark from old packaging, catalogues and commercials instead of inventing a generic vintage look.
  • Make the revived mascot or trademark the hero image: a toad, bear or other character drawn flat with a clean outline, ready to spin off into merchandise, pop-up shops and messenger emoticons.
  • Letter the name as the original did: a brush or cursive Hanja logotype with Hangul beside it, or thick signboard-brush Hangul as in Baemin's Euljiro; add an outline or a hard shadow only where the archive had one.
  • Hold the label to a centred badge or framed panel and print it in two or three flat colours, such as Jinro's blue label on a sky-blue bottle, or sky blue, signboard red and mustard on cream or a pale tint.
  • Polish rather than reproduce: tidy the drawing, simplify the finish and update the product so the old design reads as new, not as distressed pastiche.

South Korea (Seoul and regional soju and food makers); practised from Busan's Daesun soju, relaunched in January 2017 as the first newtro-style soju, named 'Going New-tro' among the ten keywords of Trend Korea 2019, presented in October 2018 by Seoul National University's Consumer Trends Analysis Center, and carried by heritage brands reissuing their own packaging

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Folk & sacred symbols, Jewel & metallic, Gradients, Iridescent & holographic, Chrome & 3D render, Glitch, Experimental & distorted, Broken grid, Photocopy & distress

Palette

  • #f4ecd8
  • #7cc3e3
  • #1f58a8
  • #d7322b
  • #f0b929
  • #1c1c1c

Typefaces

  • Revived label logotypes in Hanja with Hangul beside them, such as Jinro's Hanja name from its 1970s–80s labels and Daesun soju's cursive lettering from its 1965 launch

  • Thick brush and hand-drawn Hangul display lettering of postwar Korean packaging and shop signboards

  • Woowa Brothers' Euljiro (2019) and Euljiro 10 Years Later (2020), free Hangul fonts drawn from Euljiro signboard brush lettering

  • Woowa Brothers' BM Hanna (2012), modelled on 1960s–70s shop signs cut by knife from vinyl sheet laid on acrylic

  • Hanja display characters set as a label's centrepiece, as in Muhak's 'Cheongchun'

Known for

  • HiteJinro, 'Jinro Is Back' soju (April 2019)

    a transparent sky-blue bottle and a blue label based on the Jinro labels of the 1970s and '80s, leading with the name in Hanja, with Hangul added for legibility, and the toad, a character dating to 1954; 11 million bottles sold in its first ten weeks or so

  • CU, Daehan Flour Mills and 7Bräu, Gompyo Wheat Beer (May 2020)

    cans built on the white bear logo of a 55-year-old flour brand

  • Daesun soju (Busan), relaunched in January 2017 as the first newtro-style soju, its label redrawn in October 2019 with Korean and Hanja in the cursive style of its 1965 launch; Muhak's blue-bottle newtro edition with 'Cheongchun' (youth) in Hanja on its logo

  • Oriental Brewery, OB Lager newtro edition

    (September 2019, two months only), reinterpreting the bear character and retro lettering of the OB brand, born in 1952; the bear, Lala Bear, created in 1980 for its OB Bear pubs, went on to glasses with retro lettering (January 2020), summer cans in a red swimsuit and sunglasses (August 2020), Guess apparel and KakaoTalk emoticons

  • Lotte Department Store and Lotte Chilsung, 'Delmonte Newtro' Chuseok gift set (August 2019, 3,000 sets)

    a remake of the discontinued heavy glass Delmonte juice bottle that 1980s–90s households reused for barley tea, with two cups in the period design, in a green retro box; sold out in two days

  • Samyang Foods and HiteJinro, limited Kimchi Buldak noodle package pairing Samyang's Hochi with the Jinro toad

    September 2020

  • Woowa Brothers (Baemin), Euljiro typeface (Hangul Day 2019) and Euljiro 10 Years Later (2020), drawn from the brush lettering of signboards on Euljiro's tool street

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Newtro (Korean New-Retro)’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.

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04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleNewtro (Korean New-Retro)2017–present · East Asia

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Sources

  1. Kwak Yeon-soo, "'PIGGY DREAM' - keywords for next year", The Korea Times, 24 October 2018: https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/amp/lifestyle/trends/20181024/piggy-dream-keywords-for-next-year
  2. Yoon Kyung-hee, "Back to the future is trendy again", Korea JoongAng Daily, 2 January 2019: https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/business/back-to-the-future-is-trendy-again/11285872
  3. 김유연, "'원조가 돌아왔다'…하이트진로, 뉴트로 제품 '진로' 출시", Dailian, 18 April 2019: https://www.dailian.co.kr/news/view/788961/
  4. "Jinro soju, which never left, stages comeback", Korea JoongAng Daily, 12 July 2019: https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/business/jinro-soju-which-never-left-stages-comeback/10015426
  5. Jo He-rim, "[Feature] Soju goes 'newtro'", The Korea Herald, 12 January 2020: http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20200109000763
  6. 이호정, 전세진, "오비맥주, OB라거 '뉴트로' 제품 한정판 출시 外", Dealsite, 18 September 2019: https://dealsite.co.kr/articles/52198
  7. 임재인, "오비맥주, 설 맞이 'OB라거 랄라베어' 패키지 출시", 토요경제, 13 January 2020: https://www.sateconomy.co.kr/news/view/179590294684552
  8. 이현석, "[오늘의 유통 단신] 오비맥주, 오비라거 여름 패키지 출시 外", iNews24, 3 August 2020: https://inews24.com/view/wrlted/1287271
  9. Yim Hyun-su, "Why alcohol brand mascots are making a comeback", The Korea Herald, 24 December 2020 (republished on Daum): https://v.daum.net/v/20201224112257959
  10. "7Bräu Gompyo Wheat Beer No. 1 at CU", Korea JoongAng Daily, 6 May 2021: https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/business/7brau-gompyo-wheat-beer-no-1-at-cu/11768445
  11. 이하영, "추석 선물세트도 '뉴트로'…델몬트 주스 옛날 유리병 출시", eNewsToday, 25 August 2019: http://www.enewstoday.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=1331367
  12. 황효정, "단종됐던 델몬트 주스 '유리병'이 한정판으로 재출시됐다", The Epoch Times Korea, 28 August 2019: https://www.epochtimes.kr/2019/08/494847.html
  13. 김천, "3천 개 찍어내 완판된 롯데 '델몬트 보리차 유리병 선물세트'", Insight, 3 September 2019: https://www.insight.co.kr/news/244698
  14. Baek Byung-yeul, "Samyang Foods launches new kimchi-flavored Buldak spicy noodles", The Korea Times, 27 September 2020: https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2021/09/694_296728.html
  15. Kim Chulhyun, "Baemin Unveils 'Euljiro 10 Years Later Font' to Celebrate Hangul Day", The Asia Business Daily, 9 October 2020: https://view.asiae.co.kr/en/article/2020100909024528550
  16. DIGITAL iNSIGHT, "05. 우리가 어떤 '폰트'입니까", 10 August 2017 (on BM Hanna): https://ditoday.com/?p=429
  17. Jung Chae-hee, "'요즘 옛날' 뜯어보기 뉴트로 백과사전", Hankyung Money, 23 January 2020: https://magazine.hankyung.com/money/article/202101203453c
  18. 연희진, "'곰표 맥주' 공전의 히트 그 이후… '곰에서 호랑이로' 카피캣 논란", Money S, 4 May 2023: https://www.sidae.com/article/2023050313090768053
  19. Choi Joon-ho, "What's in a name?", Korea JoongAng Daily, 3 April 2018: https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/korea/whats-in-a-name/10228881
  20. Dawool Jung & Jisoo Ha, "A Study on Retro Fashion Culture in South Korea from the Perspective of Nostalgia: A Focus on Newspapers", Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles 46(5), 2022, pp. 789–804: https://doi.org/10.5850/JKSCT.2022.46.5.789
  21. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtro_culture

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