Hangul Alphabet

Korean Alphabet, known as Hangul, is the official writing system for the Korean language. In the US, Korean American community is the fifth largest Asian American subgroup, and Hangul is not widely used compared to other foreign languages. English is the dominant language, and social pressure exists to use it. The members of the immigrant community are experiencing bilingual experiences. To demonstrate the bilingual experience, the Hangul Alphabet typeface was designed using Korean consonants and vowels but read as a Latin script. Some letters in English and Korean alphabets look similar but provide very different sounds and reading experiences. The goal was to keep the original Hangul letterforms as much as possible by flipping, rotating, and combining letters and making them read as English typeface. It provides a different reading experience depending on the reader's language background. The typeface was shared with other Korean artists and designers for multidisciplinary projects. Physical Type expands the typeface to a series of 3D-printed functional and playable objects to make it available to the public. 3D printing was the ideal and affordable method to fabricate items, such as key chains, bookmarks, embossers, and even soap and candles. 3D-printed key chains were distributed on the campus to embrace the diversity in the community. The special edition of bookmarks was designed and shared for the Lunar New Year. This project could inspire artists and designers to initiate projects embracing multilingual experiences via global typography and 3D printing.