A Study of Perception on the Use of 'Seoul Color' to Establish an Unique Urban Image of Seoul City among Design Practitioners

Many cities in developed countries are showing their unique urban image reflecting their own culture, history, and aesthetic tastes. Especially color, one of the major design elements, has greater impact than other visual factors to form an unique urban characteristic. Despite the long history and cultural background, Seoul as a capital city of Korea does not have been successful to show an unique city image with the perspective of color. As a leading city of design, Seoul is trying to make its own urban identity through the symbolic environmental color, 'Seoul Color'. The purpose of this study is to identify the perception on the Seoul Color established by Seoul City among design practitioners and to suggest strategies for implementing the 'Seoul Color' in various fields of environmental design to set up un unique urban image of Seoul City. For this purpose, questionnaire survey was used and 77 questionnaires were analysed. Although most of the respondents did not know the 'Seoul Color', they recognized the importance of it as a major tool of building an unique urban identity of Seoul City. Respondents recognized the representing color image of Seoul as gray. Therefore, it shows a need for environmental policy to make an eco-friendly and lively city image of Seoul instead of current monotonous image. Also in order to make a unique urban image of Seoul city, 'Seoul Color' should be applied to the shape of landscape of Seoul differently. In addition, many strategies including advertisement, education, making up obvious goals for using the 'Seoul Color', and so on were suggested as conclusion.

서울시 도시이미지 구축을 위한 서울시 제정 '서울색' 활용방안에 대한 디자인 실무자들의 의식 연구