Hangeul Is Seen Before It Is Read... Drawing a New 100 Years with Consonants and Vowels

International poster exhibition marking 580 years since the promulgation of Hunminjeongeum and 100 years since the establishment of Gagyanal
Designers from Korea and abroad reinterpret Hangeul’s forms, negative space, and rhythms through visual art
October 31 to November 6 along the DDP Perimeter Path... expanding Hangeul from a writing system into a visual language

“Giyeok” is a corner where two straight lines meet, while “ieung” is a circle whose beginning and end touch. When we stop reading the letters and look only at their shapes, familiar Hangeul begins to look like an unfamiliar picture. Lines and dots, circles and squares. Created to convey meaning, writing is also a form of design in its own right. An exhibition asking what the next 100 years hold for Hangeul begins here.

Poster for the international exhibition “Hangul: A New 100 Years,” running from Oct. 31 to Nov. 6 along the walking path around Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in Seoul. Organized by the Korea Visual Information Design Association (VIDAK) to commemorate the 580th anniversary of the promulgation of Hunminjeongeum and the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Hangul Day, the exhibition features Korean and international designers reinterpreting Hangul’s distinctive visual forms through contemporary visual art. Korea Visual Information Design Association

The Korea Visual Information Design Association (VIDAK) will hold the international poster exhibition “Hangeul, a New 100 Years” along the DDP Perimeter Path in Seoul from October 31 to November 6. The exhibition explores the formal possibilities of Hangeul, marking the 580th anniversary of the promulgation of Hunminjeongeum and the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Hangul Day.

This year, when the two anniversaries coincide, is a special occasion to look back on Hangeul’s history. Hunminjeongeum, promulgated by King Sejong in 1446, was a writing system created so that ordinary people could express their thoughts in writing. In 1926, 480 years later, people seeking to protect their language and writing under Japanese colonial rule established “Gagyanal.” It was the starting point for today’s Hangul Day.

580 years ago, a writing system was created to open the door to communication; 100 years ago, an anniversary was established to protect that writing system. Building on that history, this exhibition shifts the focus of the question: What will Hangeul be able to express in the future?

The answer lies not in writing sentences with letters, but in interpreting the letters themselves visually. The exhibition features VIDAK members and invited artists from Korea and abroad. In their posters, the designers explore the spaces and forms created by Hangeul’s consonants and vowels, as well as the rhythms that emerge from the spacing and repetition of strokes. The appearance of letters, which we may have overlooked while reading for meaning, is brought to the center of the work.

Hangeul’s distinctive qualities make these explorations possible. The way consonants and vowels come together to form a syllable creates a variety of spaces within each character. Even the same letters can create a different overall impression depending on how they are arranged and combined. For designers, Hangeul is both a complete writing system and a formal material that can be taken apart and reassembled.

The exhibition poster itself hints at these possibilities. Blue threads intertwine to form a sphere, while red threads create a geometric structure and extend downward. Countless lines come together to form a single shape. The title, “Hangeul, a New 100 Years,” invites viewers to see familiar letters not as fixed symbols but as subjects for new connections and interpretations.

The setting is also worth noting. Unlike a typical museum gallery, the DDP Perimeter Path is a space that follows gentle slopes and curves. Rather than standing in one place to view the works, visitors encounter the posters one by one as they walk.

The act of viewing the works is intertwined with the experience of walking through the space. The exhibition’s aim—to look back on Hangeul’s past, move through design in the present, and imagine its future possibilities—unfolds along the path.

Visual design using Hangeul is about more than creating beautiful lettering. By breaking down and recombining the forms of the letters, designers ask how much a character can change while still being recognized as Hangeul, and where the boundary lies between legible writing and an appealing image. The forms and structures we have overlooked precisely because we use these letters every day provide the starting point for that experimentation.

580 years ago, Hunminjeongeum was created so that ordinary people could easily express their thoughts. 100 years ago, Gagyanal began as an effort to protect that writing system. So what should we do over the next 100 years? The exhibition suggests that preservation and inheritance alone are not enough. Just as important as protecting Hangeul is asking what new things we can create with it.

For those who can read Hangeul, “giyeok” and “ieung” are so familiar that they often go unnoticed. This exhibition briefly sets that familiarity aside. If we can discover forms we have not seen before in letters used unchanged for centuries, then Hangeul’s new 100 years have already begun within them.

The exhibition runs through November 6 along the DDP Perimeter Path at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in Seoul.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.