Today marks the opening day of Hyunju Lee and Phil Choo's typographic design exhibit at the University of California, Davis. Running from October 4th through December 6th, 2009, the exhibition, explores the usage of Hangul [Korean writing system] as a art form in contrast to its more traditional artistic form--calligraphy.
The nature of using text as the basis of art or design isn't new, but rather quite old. Most every modern civilization has roots tied to calligraphy, for example the Chinese with their writing system or the Arabs with theirs' as well. Hyunju and Phil apply their traditional roots to a new era of design and art. This was reflected in the way the artists chose to exhibit their work.
Some pieces were setup to emulate traditional Asian type scroll calligraphy, but had a modern twist to it. The manipulation of Hangul in ways like color, placement, orientation and size. A piece by Lee, I believe it was called "ha ha," had the Hangul character for the sound "Ha" repeated throughout the format, but had three in a up, down, up pattern bold. Possibly to try and communicate how universal laughter is, and how it takes us to a "higher" state of mind.
Aside from this the entire exhibit was very interesting and for me personally, it gave me a lot of inspiration for typography.
Photo Courtesy of www.designmuseum.ucdavis.edu
