• Archives of design research
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• v.19 no.2 s.64
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• pp.261-272
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• 2006

As we cannot think of our lives without a nation, it is closely related to almost every part of our daily lives. The role of government is becoming more important in the complex modern society as an essential element of national authority even though the government has indirect and secondary characteristics in its functional performance. Therefore, the government has to be efficient in planning and executing its policies, and it needs to be representative and fair as part of a national authoritative community. In the 21st century when symbolic and cultural importance of images are becoming more important, it is crucial for the government organizations to have an integrated identity design system that can satisfy both of these requirements of the government. However, the C.I.(Corporate Identity) of each Korean administrative branch has been developed separately and sporadically, which resulted in lack of consistency as part of the government. Shape and material of their C.I.s that follow short term design trend and popularity also lack uniqueness which can be distinguished from those of any private corporation. This may show that our government lacks systematic administrative capability, since image of a feature represents its characteristics and reality, and their recognition and evaluation from others become identity of the feature. In this perspective, the purpose of this thesis is to suggest an identity design system that has certain rules and regularity with wide variety of possible alterations for the central administration in Korea. In order to represent this visually, identity design system with both integrity and variety of possible alteration is created based on traditional Korean culture, especially the concept of Umyang-ohaeng and Samjae.

• Archives of design research
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• v.19 no.2 s.64
• /
• pp.241-250
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• 2006

Hangeul as the Korean unique characters were invented according to some character-making principles and based on scholars' exhaustive researches. While most of the characters in the world evolved naturally, Hangeul was invented based on a precise linguistic analysis of the time, and therefore, it is most scientific and reasonable among various characters throughout the world. Nevertheless, Hangeul typeface designs do not seem to inherit the ideology of scientific and reasonable Hangeul correctly. For the square forms have been used intact due to the influences from the Chinese characters which prevailed during the time. If a single set of square characters should be designed, as much as 11,172 fonts should be designed, which suggests that advantages of Mangeul may not well be used fully; Hangeul was invented to visualize every sound with the combinations of 28 vowels and consonants. Problems of such square fonts began to be identified since 1900's when typewriters were introduced first from the West. Since a typewriter is designed with 28 characters laid out on its keyboard by using such combinations, the letters may be easily combined on it. The so-called the flexibility square-format typeface was born as such. Specially, the three-pairs fonts of these can be combined up to 67 letters including vowels and consonants. The three-pairs fonts system can help to solve the problems arising form the conventional square fonts and inherit the original ideology of Hangeul invention. This study aims to review the history of the three-pairs fonts designs facilitated by mechanic encoding of Hangeul and thereupon, suggest some desirable directions for future Hangeul fonts. Since the flexibility square-format typeface is expected to evolve more and more owing to development of the digital technology, they would serve our age of information in terms of both functions and convenience. Just as Hunminjongum tried to be literally independent from the Chinese characters, so the flexibility square-format typeface designs would serve to recover identity of our Hangeul font designs.