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HANEWA Symbol Set

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“A Jew, a Korean and an American all walk into a bar...”

...What next?!

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Growing up I was encouraged to keep my diverse cultural background a part of me and to treasure its uniqueness, instead of pushing it aside. I am an adopted Korean-American who was raised Jewish. Because of my background, I have been able to experience several different cultures and traditions, which has led to the basis of my senior project.

As many racist jokes begin, I started with this statement, “A Jew, a Korean and an American walk into a bar...” and then thought about how they would communicate with each other. With this statement in mind, I started to explore different ways of communication and decided to focus on the written letterforms, the alphabet. For my senior project, I explored the Jewish and Korean alphabets and the similarities and differences between the letterforms, to create a set of 18 symbols. Although this project relates to me directly, I think this exploration will encourage the audience and other designers to think about the importance of communication and other ways to work around a language barrier.

PROJECT STATEMENT

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RESEARCH & INFLUENCES:

/Ahn Sang-Soo/Esperanto/Evan Roth

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AHN SANG-SOO

I frist ran into his work early this semester in the Skolos and Wedell book and it was also mentioned in my Materials & Methods class too. I was drawn to his work because he not only does a lot of typography work with the Korean letterforms, but he also created his own symbol system around a poem, which stemmed from a previous project.

I really liked the very modern feel to the symbols he created and drew a lot of visual inspiration when it came to design my own set of symbols.

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ESPERANTO

Espearnto was something I was introduced to a little on in the semester by Sandie Maxa. Once I had a better grasp on what I was trying to achieve for my final exhibition, the theory and concept behind Esperanto seemed to match perfectly with my project.

Created by Dr. L L Zamenhof, this was an international language, not spoken by many, but known throughout the world, that was easy to learn an politically unbiased. The idea that anyone could learn this language without years and years of practice and classes was very intriguing.

A B C Ĉ D E F G Ĝ H Ĥ I J Ĵ KL M N O P R S Ŝ T U Ŭ V Z

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EVAN ROTH

Thinking ahead about display and exhibition design, I found the work of Evan Roth to be very helpful, epsecially his project “Graffiti Taxonomy.”

In his displays, he kept it very clean and simple and let the beauty of the graffiti lettering stand by itself. Knowing that I wanted a very modern and sleek feel to my exhibition, I really found his work inspirational and showed me that you can keep it very straight forward and simple, yet have a strong impact/influence on the audience.

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WORK IN PROGRESS:

/Sketches/Digital Sketches

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THE BEGINNING

I first started by writing out both the Korean and Hebrew alphabets. I then dove straight in and tried to combine/pair up a Korean letter with a Hebrew letter, playing around with position and overlap.

During this process, I literally tried every combination I could, but could only go so far with it. Because it was hand-drawn sketches, the proportions and line weights were throwing me off, so I decided it was time to move to the computer.

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DIGITAL SKETCHES

Once I chose the fonts for each alphabet, I started to pull in combinations that I thought worked on paper and replicated them on the computer. The computer allowed for a more consistent line weight, which helped with proportions and the visual asthetics of this created symbol.

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DIGITAL SKETCHES: PART 2

After I came up with a sollid combination/pairing, I then started to alter the newly created symbol. I took away different parts of the characters to try and create a more visually stimulating symbol. The goal was to create a new symbol that would be new to the viewer’s eye, but to also still visually reference the beauty of the original letterforms.

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THE FINAL PROJECT:

/Final Symbols/ Deliverables

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THE FINAL SYMBOLS

After going through all the symbols I created and picking and choosing what worked and what didn’t, I finally had a set of complete symbols. The next part was to make the symbols unified as a whole and make sure everything was proportional. The hardest part was trying to figure out a good “x-height” for the symbols. The other more time consuming part was making sure that the stroke width for all the symbols were the same.

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WHAT DO THEY MEAN?

Thinking more about the meaning behind this whole project, I wanted the symbols to represent something that everyone can relate to. Because the symbols themselves are slightly ambiguous I wanted the meanings to fall under a topic that was also hard to catagorize, so I went with emotions.

Since this project is based off of who I am, I thought emotions are something everyone can relate to. Also, emotions are a complicated matter and their meanings aren’t always as straight forward as we would like them to be, which is why I thought it would fit well with my set of symbols. Overall, I wanted a direct meaning for each symbol, but I didn’t want that to be the main focus of the project. I want the audience to view the symbols and take away the beauty of what they are seeing, as well as acknowledge the difficulties of language barriers, but work around those obstacles.

modest

timid

foolish

determined

rejuvinated

motivated

couragous

curious

mellow

confused

humble

level-headed

stable

patient

uncertain

grateful

confident

liberated

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TYPE SPECIMEN BOOK

Since the rest of my exhibition is very clean and simple, I wanted to have one aspect that is more playful and experimental. For this type specimen book, I wanted to play with patterns and how the symbols relate and work with each other. Although this is still in the works, these are some of the first rounds of pattern sketches.

ANIMATION

To show the audience more of how I came about creating my symbols, I created a simple animation that shows the single letter forms, how they combine with each other and then what I altered to create the final symbols you see before you.

Korean Hebrew

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ACRYLIC LASER CUTOUTS

The last part of my exhibition will be the symbols themselves. At first, I wanted to create a poster showing the symbols, but instead, decided to get them laser cut. Having the physical symbols not only makes the project feel real, but it is also a different way of presenting them instead of your typical poster.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Ball, Philip. “A Better Way To Learn Chinese?” BBC.com. N.p., 18 Mar. 2013. Web. 7 May 2013.

Dreyfuss, Henry. Symbol Sourcebook: An Authoritative Guide to International Graphic Symbols. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972.

“Esperanto-USA | Esperanto: The International Language That Works!” Esperanto-USA N.p., n.d. Web. 07 May 2013.

“Make A Lang: Orthography - Making Your Own Alphabet.” Make A Lang. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 May 2013.

Lupton, Ellen. Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2010.

Roth, Evan. “Cache Self Portrait at Gordian Conviviality….” Bad Ass Mother Fucker. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 May 2013.

Skolos, Nancy, and Thomas Wedell. Graphic Design Process: From Problem to Solution : 20 Case Studies. London: Laurence King Pub., 2012.

Willen, Bruce, and Nolen Strals. Lettering & Type: Creating Letters and Designing Typefaces. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2009.

Type Specimen books from Lost Type Co., Emigre and House Industries

HANEWA Symbol Set