Stylogenyin the style of Out-of-Square Hangul Typography

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Postmodern · 1985–present · East Asia

Out-of-Square Hangul Typography

Also known as Tal-nemo (out-of-square) Hangul, Talnemokkol typefaces (탈네모꼴), De-squared Hangul, Ahn Sang-soo style

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.

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Oversized black and red Korean letterforms fill an off-white vertical cover. A blue ring above a long blue rectangle resembles a lowercase i near the lower left.
AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

01

How it works

  • Draw each consonant and vowel at one fixed size and let syllables grow downward, so lines hang from a common top edge and finish raggedly at the bottom.
  • Construct letters from the script's own geometric primitives (circle, dot, horizontal and vertical stroke) as monoline modules rather than brush-derived strokes.
  • Enlarge a single jamo or syllable until it becomes the image, and let its circles and strokes double as figures.
  • Work in black and one or two flat spot colours on white, so the letter structure carries the expression.
  • Experiment with the structure of Hangul itself, a featural syllabic script, instead of importing distortions from Latin typography.

Seoul, South Korea: Ahn Sang-soo's 1985 typeface, Ahn Graphics and the magazine Bogoseo/Bogoseo, prefigured by the non-square output of mid-century Hangul typewriters

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
Monospace, Script, Ornamented display, Abundant decoration, Floral & vegetal, Skeuomorphic material, Painterly illustration

Palette

  • #f5f3ee
  • #111111
  • #d7261e
  • #1f4fa0
  • #f2c12e

Typefaces

  • Ahn Sang-soo typeface

    안상수체, 1985

  • Isang-che, Mir-che and Mano-che

    Ahn Sang-soo

  • Hankyoreh Gyeol-che

    한겨레결체, 2005

  • Hangul typewriter letterforms

    Gong Byeong-u's sebeolsik machines

Known for

  • Ahn Sang-soo, Ahn Sang-soo typeface

    1985; digital version 1991

  • Ahn Sang-soo, Isang-che, Mir-che and Mano-che typefaces

  • Ahn Sang-soo, Madang typeface for Madang magazine

    art director from 1983

  • Bogoseo/Bogoseo (Report/Report), alternative art and culture magazine, from 1988

  • Hankyoreh Gyeol-che, out-of-square text face by Tae System for the Hankyoreh newspaper

    2005

  • Ahn Sang-soo

    Imagining Hangul, Rodin Gallery, Seoul (2002)

  • Paju Typography Institute (PaTI), founded by Ahn Sang-soo

    2013

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Out-of-Square Hangul Typography’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 styleOut-of-Square Hangul Typography1985–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

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

06

Sources

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahn_Sang-soo_(designer)
  2. https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/한겨레결체
  3. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=61173 (comment by Jongseong Park on tal-nemo typefaces)
  4. https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/lifestyle/typeface-artist-truly-a-font-of-creativity/11131007

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