Month: October 2021

Behind the Wave That Became an Overseas Sensation.

Even though you might not have heard the name Katsushika Hokusai, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ve seen his most famous work Under the Wave off Kanagawa, better known as The Great Wave. This renowned woodblock print is a part of a series of prints titled Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji, which was made between 1830-1833. Fuji appears in all of the images in the series, sometimes as the focal point and other times as background detail. One of the most striking aspects of The Great Wave is the use of Persian Blue, a recently invented pigment at the time that was imported to Japan. Visual play is also apparent in the piece as the mountain, reduced in size by perspective, looks to be moments away from being engulfed by a gigantic wave.

Born in 1760 in Edo (now Tokyo), Japan, Katsushika Hokusai’s name had become synonymous with ukiyo-e art. Most of the ukiyo-e prints back then depicted images of courtesans and actors but Hokusai decided to move away from the tradition to focus on landscapes and the everyday routines of Japanese individuals from various economic classes. This change of subject eventually led to the creation of Thity-Six Views of Mount Fuji, which marked the summit in the history of Japanese landscape print. The series, particularly The Great Wave and Fuji in Clear Weather, cemented Hokusai’s reputation both in Japan and overseas.

During the Edo period, ukiyo-e prints were inexpensive and thousand of copies of a print were produced until the carvings on the woodblocks became worn out. Initially, prints were monochromatic but new technology in 1765 enabled a wide spectrum of colours to be added. A separate block was used for each colour and the paper had to be sturdy enough to resist multiple rubbings on the various woodblocks.

Regardless of the fact that The Great Wave was created at a time when Japanese trade was heavily restricted, Hokusai’s print left a lasting impact on the art world and the formation of the West’s perception of Japanese art. From the 1870s onwards, Japonisme became a prominent trend and had a strong influence on artists such as Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh.

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Sources

Research

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ukiy/hd_ukiy.htm

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hokusai

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/south-east-se-asia/japan-art/a/hokusai-under-the-wave-off-kanagawa-the-great-wave

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20150409-the-wave-that-swept-the-world

Images

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/45030

https://japanesegallery.com/references-ukiyo-e

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_L%C3%A9onard_de_Jonghe

Zines were something I’ve been wanting to make for some time so I was pleasantly surprised when this project got assigned. For my design, I decided to go with a more modern and minimalistic approach because I thought that represented the typeface the best. With the use of whitespace, I brainstormed a lot about what I could do to present my content in interesting ways while getting critical information across.

Front page: Since Futura is a geometric-based typeface, I included a lot of those shapes and forms on the cover. To offset how geometric most of the design is throughout the rest of the zine, I decided to draw most of the elements and purposefully didn’t use a ruler to give it a more handmade feel.
About page: Although Futura is most often used as a display font, it’s one of the most versatile typefaces around. The stroke weight is almost even throughout and remains legible even when the font is resized. For that reason, I presented a rundown of the key facts about Futura on a receipt to indicate that it can also work well in fine print. 
Usage page: Popular in advertisements and logos, I showed off a collection of brands that use Futura or a customized version of it.
The Moon page: During my early stages of research, what stood out to me the most about Futura was the fact that it was the first typeface to land on the moon. I chose to dedicate a page in the last spread for this fact so I could make my zine more personal to what I found interesting.

Like always, I spent too much time in the planning process that I didn’t leave much time to make the actual product. As a result, I made my zine in a rush and made some dumb mistakes along the way. I couldn’t make my handwriting as neat as I wanted to and one of my biggest regrets was that I accidentally coloured in the letters in my title. Initially, I had planned on making the letters white and the background red to reflect Supreme’s logo. Moreover, I misunderstood the requirements for the last page. The brief said that the back cover should include a brief bullet summary so I thought a table of contents would suffice. If I could go back, I would make sure I cleared up any confusion with the brief before I created my zine. Nevertheless, I would give myself a 8/10. I’m satisfied with the outcome of my design and did my best to showcase Futura in a way that’s engaging and easy to follow.

https://www.slideshare.net/RaynaL3/futura-type-specimen-zine

The Birth of the World’s Easiest Writing System.

Hangul (한글), the Korean writing system, is an alphabet of 24 letters made up of 10 consonants and 14 vowels. Unlike most other written languages, Hangul is unique in the way it was created deliberately rather than having evolved over time.

Before the 15th century, Chinese was used as the normal medium of written communication. This system was known in Korea as Hanja (한자, 漢字) but the transferring of Chinese script to the Korean language caused issues. The two languages were fundamentally different in structure and didn’t represent the sounds of spoken Korean at all. This made it extremely difficult to learn and as a result, Hanja was out of reach for the lower classes.

Seeing the divide between the elites and lower classes, King Sejong of the Choson dynasty wanted to unite the people of Korea by inventing an alphabet for the language. By 1446, Hangul was unveiled and was made the official writing system.

Despite how much it improved literacy, Hangul nearly died out due to the elite wanting to preserve their status. For them, Hanja was the only true way to write Korean and Hangul was eventually banned by King Yeonsnagum in the 16th century. Fast forward 500 years, Hangul saw a resurgence during the Japanese occupation and the use of Hanja started to decline in the 1970s. These days, almost all Korean is written in Hangul and Korea boasts near 100% literacy nationwide!

Fun fact! There is even a national holiday set aside in honour of the invention of Hangul. Hangul Day (한글날) is celebrated on October 9 and is the world’s only official holiday dedicated to a writing system.

The Mechanics of Hangul

Just like how English assigns a sound to each letter, Hangul is also phonetic. However, it includes a number of changes that make it particularly well adapted to Korean. Instead of each letter being written in a straight line, each syllable is formed in a block-like shape that matches the Chinese characters they replaced. This simplifies the process of determining the definition of any Chinese-based words. With each block containing at least one consonant and one vowel, consonants are designed to look like the speaker’s mouth shape when pronouncing the corresponding sounds, whereas vowels include elements meaning ‘sky( · )’, ‘land(ㅡ)’, and ‘human(ㅣ)’. As the spoken words mostly sound exactly as they are written, Hangul is recognized to be one of the world’s easiest writing systems to learn.

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Sources:

Research

https://www.90daykorean.com/hangul-day/

https://whattodoinkorea.com/a-brief-history-of-hangeul/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hangul-Korean-alphabet

https://www.britannica.com/topic/writing/Chinese-writing-and-its-derivatives

Images

https://www.90daykorean.com/hangul-day/

https://ellun.tistory.com/m/277

https://m.blog.naver.com/PostView.naver?isHttpsRedirect=true&blogId=hanuinuri&logNo=60123307274