For over 600 years since its creation, the Korean alphabet, Hangul, has been in daily use mixed with the Chinese characters.
The nation's liberation from the imperial Japan in the mid 20thcentury was swiftly followed by the influx of the Western ...
For over 600 years since its creation, the Korean alphabet, Hangul, has been in daily use mixed with the Chinese characters.
The nation's liberation from the imperial Japan in the mid 20thcentury was swiftly followed by the influx of the Western culture and educational system, which has paved the way for more frequent blending in the Hangul text of not only the Chinese characters but also the Roman letters.
Despite such high mixing frequency of various fonts of different languages, it is extremely disappointing to find that we still lack of professional studies on efficient mixing methods, as well as on selecting and developing suitable Roman fonts to mix with the Hangul fonts.
In this present study, the writer aims to propose such Roman fonts that are immediately legible, natural, harmonious and visually comfortable when mingled with Hangul fontsin the same sentence, paragraph or text.
In search of Roman fonts that match Hangul fonts most suitably, the study has been conducted in accordance with the following method:
1. The comparative analysis on the differences of Hangul fonts and Roman fonts:
- The origin and development history of letters that are visual languages
- The differences of Hangul fonts and Roman fonts in terms of cultural, formative and linguistic functions
2. Case studies on the mixture of Hangul fonts and English fonts in the Korean domestic printed publications:
- The categorical classification and analysis of mixture cases in the domestic printed materials
- The research on the problems and inadequacy that may arise from the mixed use of Hangul fonts and English fonts in the same sentence, paragraph or text
3. The readability experiment in the case of mixing Hangul fonts and English fonts in the same work:
- Surveys on the preferred Hangul and English fonts
- Korean domestic graphic and publication designers have been interviewed.
- Representative Roman and Hangul fonts selected from this survey have been presented to students for readability experiments.
4. Proposition of Roman fonts suitable and matching for Hangul fonts:
- The representative Hangul and Roman fonts chosen through the survey have been compared in font boldness, width and base line, etc.
- Based on the competent results from the similarity analysis, I have proposed some Roman fonts which I believe are suitable and matching for Hangul fonts.
Through the presented study, the author concludes that, when Roman fonts are to be used with Hangul fonts such as 'Yoon Gothic 100s' and 'Yoon Myong-Style 100s' in the same work, using English fonts belonging to the same type family of Hangul fonts is more desirable than using exclusive Roman fonts like Helvetica, Garamond, and so on.
Due to the limitations in the scope and kind of surveyed specimen fonts, the result of this study shall not be applied universally to all Hangul fonts. However, I hope that it will be able to serve as a starting material for those designers who want to apply fonts more efficiently in a mixed inter-lingual environment and who want to develop more comfortable and matching Roman fonts for their Korean Hangul counterparts.
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