Korea has a long and rich culture of typography, and a print heritage as well as its unique language system. In addition to the Asian calligraphy tradition based on brushes, it has the world’s oldest woodcuts and metal type prints. Along with the history of printing, lead type printing technology has transformed into the current digital font software through photo-typeset printing. Sandoll has developed fonts for 34 years based on the printing tradition and spirit of type culture in Korea, and it shows how the current font foundry pioneered the typographic environment with Korea’s past printing heritage. In particular, at this ATypI, Sandoll shows an example of expanding the typographic environment by introducing the “JeongChe” typeface project, the font family that reflects the classification of ages, started in early 2017. It raises questions about the current Korean font paradigm that has been fixed firmly for a long time, and gives a proposal for a brand-new standard style to make the printing environment much richer.
Chorong Kim designs, thinks, and talks about type and its environment. She studied visual design at ERBA Besançon (ISBA Besançon) and type design at ESAD d’Amiens in France. After that, Kim moved to Bangkok and joined Cadson Demak as a type designer. She currently works at Sandoll as a type designer, project director, and communicator. She is also a member of KST (Korea Society of Typography) and a mentor for the Alphabettes mentorship program. Kim teaches in various institutions, including Hangeul Typography School. She plays a role in informing and educating people about Latin and Thai type design in Korea and Hangul type design in foreign countries. Kim has also participated as a speaker and author at ATypI, BITS, and KST conferences.
Partnership coordinator and lead of the global business team at Sandoll, Hyewon Han studied Visual Communication Design at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul, Republic of Korea. After working in graphic design and branding design fields, Han began her career at Sandoll as a type designer. Currently, she works as a strategic planner and global business manager. With a keen interest in various fields, Han enjoys interacting with people from different backgrounds and loves listening to their stories.
