굴림체의 조형적 특징과 선호도 분석 연구

Abstract

Gulim is the most common letter form among people both off and online. However, despite of its high popularity, there is almost no data on its history and production background and no study on its formative characteristics and analysis. Moreover, some typographers recently have suggested avoiding Gulim. Why is it not favored by them even though people still prefer using it? It is necessary to figure out the problems Gulim has and draw practical solutions to them. This research aims to find concrete answers for the above question. For this, it studies traits of Gulim and analyzes its popularity in terms of design. That is, it investigates that what is wrong with the common and easy use of Gulim and why this should be fixed. In addition, it hopes to contribute to future oriented development of Hangul with proper recognition and improvements in this era of globalization. Conclusions are the following.

Firstly, the consonants and vowels of Gulim are made under limits of a square frame and its consonants thus have no steady feature and its stretched width changes when vowels and consonants combine. Also, Consonants with added lines such as ㅋ or ㅌ have uneven thickness and gray scale of them look irregular for a display. Therefore, it was found that controlling the thickness of lines is necessary to have steady gray scale as Hangul has many lines. Secondly, this irregular space arrangement makes it difficult to indentify each letters- grouping- and reduces readability. It particularly makes letters look larger due to wide inner space while narrows its surrounding room. So it seems not to have appropriate formativeness as it does not keep letter principle without careful arrangement that requires steady look under various letter combinations. However, Surveys confirmed that Gulim has enjoyed much popularity in spite of all these formative problems pointed out in analysis. In other words, non-professionals are not aware of these issues at all. It proves that there are some shoddy letter styles that have been long used familiarly regardless of their formative defects while some decent ones that have been well made through detailed research. This seems to represent short history of Hangul, which has been accompanied by many historical hardships, even though they don’t have exact production background and formativeness acknowledged. Accordingly, typographers should take a closer look at history of Hangul characters and build up the base for creating better characters solving problems of letter styles poorly built. Hangul is a basic visual symbol of Korea as well as representative mark and culture of one. Therefore, it is designers’ duty to study, develop and apply good Hangul letter styles for making Hangul more beautiful and more Hangul-like and lead an awareness of suitable letter styles for visual improvement of social environment.