Ahn Sang Soo (pen name: Nalgae) is a pioneer in Korean typography. He’s experimented with hangul for over 30 years and has 4 major hangul fonts to his name. He’s won lots of awards including the DFA (Design For Asia) lifetime achievement award 2016 from Hong Kong. And he founded PaTI (Paju Typography Institute).

He may not be a household name, but his hangul fonts are very distinctive and can be seen in posters and advertising.

Hangul fonts: AHN SANG SOO FONT

Ahn Sang Soo’s first claim to fame is his pioneering hangul font that is named after him. He played with the structure of the hangul characters to come up with something new.

When hangul was first created, the characters were made to fit into a square. This made sense as literate people were already familiar with this idea as Chinese characters also fit into a square structure. (So when students learn to write hangul, they can use squared paper to practise on rather than lined paper.)

But Ahn Sang Soo came up with a new font which breaks away from the square.

For example, here’s 학 (hak) in hangul. It’s made up of three parts. ㅎ,   ㅏ,  ㄱ.  Traditionally, the bottom consonant ㄱ would fill the whole bottom part of the square, but in the ahn sang soo font, it’s positioned over on the right. So the result is a more quirky feel with a space on the bottom left.

ISANG FONT

Another of his famous fonts was named after his favourite Dadaist poet I-sang. This time the separate parts of the hangul characters are broken up and set at different heights. They look like they are on waves blowing in the wind. The different heights also make them look like musical notes. In fact he wrote a children’s song in this font.

In the Isang font his pen name nalgae 날개 looks like this…

Seoul Museum of Art 서울 시립 미술관 looks like this…

HOLLYEORA (BE IMMERSED) 2017, acrylic on canva

My favourite part of an exhibition of his work was a collection of large  ‘contemporary folk paintings’ or ‘new letter paintings’  which blend images with hangul.

The info board explained that although folk art was very popular in the late Joseon period, it was done by unknown artists for the common people and was looked down on by the traditional arts. But Ahn Sang Soo was inspired by the simplicity and sincerity of these artists.

You can see the ㅎ (hiut) letter at the top of this painting. He has experimented with the hiut letter over the years as in the work entitled Blossom Hangul where the hiut letters are blossom on the tree. And also in an interesting series called from alpha to hiut.

AHN SANG SOO’s BIO

Visual Communication Designer and Director of Paju typography Institute (PaTI) Ahn Sang Soo graduated from Hongik University (famous for Art and Design) where he also taught for many years. (picture DFA website)

He started out as an advertising designer in a large company but then became an art editor for various magazines. He created his own alternative art and culture magazine bogoseo/bogoseo (report/report).  His pioneering spirit also led him to open the first internet cafe in Korea, and later he set up Typochanji – the first Seoul Typography biennale.

ONE EYE EXHIBITION

If you go to his facebook page or his website  you will find lots of portraits of the subjects covering one eye. This series of pictures were part of the one eye exhibition where he asked the subjects to, yes, cover one eye! He started doing this in 1988 when he tried it for a self portrait and became fascinated with it. This is an ongoing project and he has taken over 30,000 pictures and 5,000 subjects!