Designing hangeul

Calligrapher promotes beauty of hangeul

Few may readily identify Kang Byung-in, but his calligraphic writings have donned popular items such as soju labels and TV drama titles.

Calligrapher Kang, 52, has written titles for popular dramas the “Woman Who Marries Thrice” (2014), “Faith” (2012) starring hallyu star Lee Min-ho, “The Innocent Man” (2012) starring actor Song Joong-ki, “The Great King Sejong” (2008) and “Mom is Enraged” (2008).

He has designed the brand logo for soju Chamisul, the Korean liquor Hwayo and the writing on the veil that wrapped the Sungnyemun while it underwent reconstruction. He also has produced art works such as “Arirang” (2012).

As a calligrapher, he paints hangeul with a design for faster and more sentimental communication.

How he does that is he “innovates” with the consonants and the vowels that form a character to create his distinctive hangeul letters and designs.

“Hangeul is a blessing for Korea, because without it, I think Korean people’s lives would have been meager,” Kang said, as he explained and taught hangeul calligraphy at the CQ Forum’s 17th Session, held at the French Cultural Institute in Jung-gu, downtown Seoul, Tuesday.

The CQ Forum is hosted by the Corea Image Communication Institute (CICI), headed by Choi Jung-wha, with the CQ referring to culture, concentration, communication, creativity and cooperation. French Ambassador Jerome Pasquier, Austrian Ambassador Elisabeth Bertagnoli, Irish Ambassador to Korea Aingeal O’Donoghue, the Jordanian Ambassador Omar Al Nahar and Didier Beltoise, head of the consulting firm Cs were among the attendants.

Kang respects and upholds the traditional Korean calligraphy’s focus on lines.

Kang said that his mentor is 19th century calligrapher Kim Jung-hee whom he also called “hallyu star” for illustrating the beauty of hangeul. But for his work, Kang differentiates the strength and width of his brush strokes to give it varying style and form in each work.

“You can use different brushes to create according to word types that will create different works,” Kang said, illustrating how fonts come out varyingly when using horse hair, bamboo, chicken feathers and bear fur.

Kang, who heads the Kang Byung In Calligraphy Institute Sooltong in Seoul, said because Korean traditional calligraphy is about the writer’s spirit, imbuing style into the characters may well be the writer giving another dimension of expression and freedom to the calligraphy.

Kang’s brand of grafting the Korean alphabet with design was born out of practical reasons as well as artistic.

He believes that design has more reason to it, while the writing has more sensibility, so he believes that marrying the two would bring a synergy effect. Kang also wanted to tackle financial hurdles that he as a calligraphist would face.

These days, Kang’s work is highly sought after and he is actively engaging in emitting his brand of calligraphy to foreigners in Korea.

“We need to shed the bias that alphabets are a sophisticated form of design while hangeul is not,” Kang said. He wants foreigners to be more aware of the beauty of hangeul through his calligraphy.

Toward the end of the CQ forum, he picked up one of the brushes to instantly create a work that read “On a spring day where the sun is fine, the wind blows to let the flower blossom,” regarding to his meeting with the CQ Forum’s participants.

Kang has held numerous overseas exhibitions including one in New York in 2010. He has several planned for next year, which is still in the stages of planning, he said.

He reportedly once said that he wants to make the hangeul walk. Asked what that meant, he said his ultimate dream is to create hangeul character sculptures like a “spring” stand somewhere in Seoul, perhaps in the space in front of Seoul City Hall or in Gwanghwamun.

Another aspect of that dream is to make people choose hangeul-designed apparel as a fashionable item to wear. By Kim Ji-soo The korea times