Found in Translation
August 16th to September 10th, 2018
Monday - Friday, 9 am - 7 pm
Extended Saturday Hours on August 18th, September 8th, 11 am - 5 pm
*Special Artist Talk Programs (see below for details) on Saturdays
Gallery Korea at the Korean Cultural Center New York
(460 Park Ave. 6th Floor, New York, NY 10022)
Opening Reception: Thursday, August 16th, 2018, 6-9 pm
In this special collaboration with Stigma & Cognition New York (S&C New York), Found in Translation was commissioned by the Korean Cultural Center New York in celebration of International Literacy Day 2018 (September 8th, 2018), designated by UNESCO in 1966.
Found in Translation focuses on shedding light on the concept of literacy and translation, more specifically, on the cultural similarities and differences between Korean and Western countries via the use of language - both written and spoken - through typography and art.
At first glance, Korean and English may not bear much resemblance to one another as a language, but interestingly, the two languages converge when used in art, pop culture, and even colloquialisms. For instance, the well-known English expression, “The grass is always greener on the other side,” reflects on how things other people have always look better than our own. This truth also exists in Korean culture, manifested differently in its own expression, “Another’s rice cake always looks bigger than your own.” In comparing the cultural contexts behind such paired expressions, we are able to discover a range of universal human truths that the two cultures share.
19 Korean and 19 American/Western artists, both renowned and up-and-coming, have each created typographic artworks that are based on expressions that the two cultures share in common.
At the exhibition, the two versions - an English version created by an American/Western artist and a Korean version created by a Korean artist - are displayed in pairs to create a juxtaposition that is both visual and semantic. The coupled works, whose literal translations in each respective language may not be identical, essentially carry the same underlying message and meaning. Through this juxtaposition, we celebrate the differences and similarities between two cultures and languages.
In sharing a vision for cultural harmony, S&C New York and Korean Cultural Center New York have also collaborated with artists to commemorate the historical inter-Korean summit that took place earlier this year. Through a special brief, one pair of artists has created work specifically inspired by the progress for peace and harmony on the Korean peninsula.
This marks the second typography exhibition of its kind hosted by S&C New York.
Saturday Artist Talk Program
(Light refreshments will be served)
Saturday, August 18, 2:00 - 4:00 pm
Found in Design: The Aesthetics of Typography and Language
with Artists Huimin Lee and Wes L Cockx (CREAM)
Saturday, September 8, 2:00 - 4:00 pm
Found in Literacy: Cultural Exchange and Translation
“Good Luck” by Wes L Cockx/CREAM
“One man band” by Mariano Pagella
About S&C New York
Stigma & Cognition New York, INC. (“S&C New York”) is a unique non-profit organization committed to creating a cultural exchange between Korean and American/Western artists, and works closely with Korean government agencies for their cultural exchange missions. We strive to provide a more effective and innovative platform for positive cultural exchange, and we’re specifically dedicated to the realm of typographic art and its value in communicating a country's language and culture.
S&C New York was established in 2012, and has since successfully organized a number of events including "The Most Talked About Typography Exhibition Among Those Who Talk About Typography Exhibitions" at the Art Directors Club gallery, "Found In Translation" at the Open House Gallery in Soho, and "Brooklyn x Seoul" at Kinfolk in Brooklyn.
Artist Biographies
Korean Artists
1. Taeryong Kim / 김태룡
Taeryong Kim is a freelance typeface designer. He has created and published the Yi-Myeon font and San-Yoo-Hwa font.
The Yi Myeon font is used by the National Library of Korea as well as Weekly Font essays, and has quickly become a font beloved by young designers. San-Yoo-Hwa was recently produced through a crowd-funding initiative, as it was recognized by young designers as a font ideal for vertical writing.
Taeryong has received a bachelor’s degree from Dankook University as well as a master’s degree from Hongik University, both in Visual Communications Design. He has actively been pursuing his passion as a typeface designer since then.
2. Mat-kkal / 맛깔손 (최희은)
Mat-kkal is a freelance designer based in Korea. She received her bachelor’s in Entertainment Design from Kaywon University of Art and Design and her master’s in Visual Communication Design from Korea National University of Arts. After receiving her master’s, she first worked at Hong Design for 4 years and has since moved on to pursue her own creative freedom.
Mat-kkal now focuses on design projects related to fine arts, movies, and music. She also enjoys producing and participating in various exhibitions or events that involve different types of creators, not limited to graphic designers.
She recently showcased the ‘Taste of Weather’ identity work at the Seoul Museum of Art. She is also the creative hand behind the ‘Cine Commune’ identity work exhibited as the first project at the recent opening of ACC CINEMATHEQUUIE.
3. Sunny Studio / 햇빛 스튜디오
Sunny Studio is a design studio specializing in designing exhibitions, brand identities, characters, and promotional materials. The studio was established in 2014 and has been actively engaging in projects with various cultural experts and art creators in Korea.
Sunny Studio runs the first LGBTQ bookstore to be established in Korea and is at the forefront of creative movements for the local LGBT community. They recently created the identity for a feminist mayoral candidate of Seoul, Jiye Shin’s green party electoral campaign.
4. Boomi Park / 박부미
Boomi Park started her career as a typeface designer in 2013 and has been developing numerous corporate and retail fonts at Sandoll Communication, the most renowned font foundry in South Korea.
5. Twothree Studio / 둘셋 스튜디오
Twothree Studio, whose name reflects its design direction to combine 2D and 3D aspects, is a studio run by a graphic designer and set designer, Jeong-In Park and Yoon-Hee Hong. The two designers strive to blend the 2D and 3D in design and culture, work and everyday life, and set out to implement a multifaceted interpretation that is never restricted to conventions.
Twothree Studio is continuing their efforts to express social issues of common interest through design, on both a personal and organizational level.
6. Riwon Kim / 김리원
Riwon Kim is a freelance graphic designer whose primary focus is on printing and publication within the realm of culture and arts. She likes to experiment with various different approaches to graphic language. Previously, she worked at Everyday Practice and Hong Design.
7. Shinwoo Park / 박신우
Shinwoo Park is the founder of a graphic studio called Paper Press, located in Seongsu-dong, which is currently one of the most trendiest areas in Seoul. Paper Press works on graphic projects across various different industries and is particularly known for its unbounded experimentation on graphic language.
Shinsoo was in charge of producing various exhibitions and concert posters for the Sejong Center for Performing Arts and recently produced a poster for the ‘2018 Choreographer’s Creative Performance’ hosted by the Korean Dance Association.
Shinwoo graduated from Ewha Woman’s University in 2016 with a bachelor’s in Visual Communication Design.
8. JUUNGSUU / 한중수
Juungsuu is a graphic designer who seeks to incorporate modern graphic trends in his Hangul typographic design while maintaining its unique and traditional values.
9. ZESSTYPE / 현승재
Zesstype is an independent freelance designer based in Seoul, Korea, primarily known for his work across typeface design, graphic design, CI/BI, and logo design.
10. Hyeongwon Ha / 하형원
Hyeongwon is a freelance graphic designer based in Seoul, Korea. He mostly works on commercial branding assignments as well as personal lettering projects.
11. Juhyun Lee / 이주현
Juhyun Lee is a graphic and typeface designer who likes to use letters as a design element. Recently, he has been deeply engaged in Korean traditional calligraphy and C4D programming, and is now trying to mold the two into a new concept called 3D calligraphy. He currently works for Yoon Design as a typeface designer, and has created various fonts, including Binggrae, Soon Batang, and Hatsal2.
12. Dong-hoon Han / 한동훈
Dong-hoon Han is a typeface designer at Sandoll Communication, the most renowned font foundry in South Korea.
He studied Visual Communication Design at Kookmin University and continues to develop his career as a Hangul typeface designer and writer/critic through various high profile freelance projects.
While his expertise lies in Hangul, he is genuinely interested in all letters created by human civilizations, and enjoys exploring various ways to express himself using different letters from distinct languages. He also likes to write about such lettering from different cultures and languages.
13. Jukyeong Kim / 김주경
Jukyeong Kim is a graphic/type designer who has been designing and finessing the Hwa-Yang-Yeon-Hwa (“In the mood for love”) font since 2016. Jukyeong has a bachelor of arts from Seoul Women’s University. She currently works as a type designer and researcher at Angraphics Typography Research Institute.
14. FRONT DOOR / 프런트 도어
Front Door is a design studio, founded by Minjeong Kang and Kyungmoon Min. Their most notable projects include the cover of the IANN magazine vol. 10 and posters for the Jeonju International Film Festival.
15. Heejoon Chae (of Nazinsa) / 채희준 (of 낮인사)
Heejoon Chae is a typeface designer who started his own design group, Nazinsa, with two other fellow designers Kuhnmo Shin and Kyungsub Oh.
Heejoon graduated from Kaywon University of Art and Design with a degree in Hangul Typography and has successfully gained a foothold in the Hangul typography market. He has published the Cheong-Wall font in 2016 and Chung-Jo font in 2017.
16. Huimin Lee
Huimin Lee is a Korean graphic designer from Mexico, living in New York City. He is currently working as a Senior Designer at MBLM, the Brand Intimacy Agency, located in New York.
17. Jung-Jin Kim / 김정진
Jung-jin Kim is a typeface designer who has always been fascinated by the idea of designing letters that we use in our everyday life. His philosophy on typeface design focuses on transmitting the designer’s perception of each letter to the actual design outcome or visualizing such perceptions.
18. Ore-Oh! studio / 오레오 스튜디오
Ore-Oh! studio is a graphic design studio with an emphasis on typography, providing a wide variety of commercial graphic design services such as brand identity, event identity, space identity, web design, print design and more.
Ore-Oh! studio seeks visual communication that is more than just a simple one-dimensional design, but always strives to shed light on the fundamental purpose of design and its impact on human society.
19. Yang-Jang & Bazbon / 양장점
Yang-Jang is a design studio founded by two typeface designers, Heejae ‘Yang’ and Sooyoung ‘Jang’. Yang-Jang is a clever word play using the two different last names of founders.
Bazbon is an illustrator, cartoonist and painter. He likes to explore different materials and techniques in his attempts to best express his ideas and philosophy visually. Often, his visual experiments align well with the general consumption of popular culture. in a way, he hopes to represent his generation that is capable of accepting new forms of arts without biased opinions.
Non-Korean Artists
1. Zipeng Zhu
Zipeng Zhu is a Chinese-born designer, art director, illustrator, and animator in New York City who wants to make everyday a razzle-dazzle musical. His clients include Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Netflix, Viacom, The New Yorker, Fox, CNN, Refinery29, Chobani, and Samsung. After he graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, he has worked at Pentagram and Sagmeister & Walsh. He was one of the Art Directors Club Young Gun’s 13 winners and has been recognized as Print magazine’s New Visual Artist and The One Show Young Ones. He has recently started his own creative studio Dazzle to make everything dazzling.
2. Wes L Cockx (CREAM)
Wes L Cockx is a Belgian 3D Illustrator and Type Designer based in New York balancing commercial work and personal explorations under the name CREAM. He specializes in experimental lettering combining digital and reality, all built in a 3D space, and often branched out in animation. Mixing styles drawing equally from pop culture, street fashion, design and music, he has created typography, illustrations and design for a diverse range of clients in advertising, editorial, and fashion. His work has been highlighted on Behance network, Inspiration Grid, GoodType, and Abduzeedo among others.
3. Justin Poulter
Justin Poulter is an Illustrator and Lettering Artist from Cape Town, South Africa now based in the Hackney area of London. Justin is represented by Snyder NY in the USA, Canada and South America and Jelly London in the United Kingdom and Europe. Some of the clients he has worked with include Levis, National Geographic, Google, Vans, Levis, Nike, Coca Cola, Knorr Foods, Bacardi, Delta Airlines, Red Bull, and Uber.
4. Craig Ward
Craig Ward is a British-born Design Director, currently based in New York. Occasional artist, sometime author, and contributor to several industry journals. He is known primarily for his pioneering typographic works.
His awards - amongst other agency credits - include ADC Young Gun (2008), recipient of the Type Directors Club Certificate of Typographic Excellence (2009, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018) and the Communication Arts Award of Excellence (2014, 2015). A regular public speaker, his work has also been shown, awarded and documented in countless books, magazines, and exhibitions in cities such as London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and more.
5. Lynne Yun
Lynne Yun is a Type Designer who specializes in all types of letterforms. From crafting handwritten calligraphic pieces to designing type for the screen, she enjoys the balancing act of form and function that is required when designing tools for communication. She enjoys sharing the joy of her craft through public speaking engagements and teaching workshops for organizations such as Typographics, TypeCon, and the Society of Scribes. Lynne’s previous positions include being a designer at Apple Inc., Publicis, and Deutsch. Her work has been recognized by organizations such as AIGA, Type Directors Club, and Art Directors Club. She currently serves on the board of AIGA NY.
6. Cindy Kinash
Cindy Kinash started her foundry, Cultivated Mind, in January of 2012. After many years of working in apparel graphic design, she decided it was time to apply her skills to creating her own brand of typography: “Cultivated Mind doesn’t have one distinct style, as it is constantly evolving and trying to release fonts that you haven’t seen before.”
Based in Canada, she released her first font, Hello I Like You, in 2012. Since then, Cindy’s foundry has produced numerous typefaces; several of which have topped the Best Sellers list. A few of Cindy’s other popular fonts include Viva Beautiful, Wanderlust Letters, and Beauty Style Collection. Cindy created these fonts either by using a paintbrush or illustrated lettering, giving the typefaces a handmade, personalized feel.
7. Mariano Pagella
Mariano Pagella is a multidisciplinary designer from Argentina working and living in Barcelona, passionate about typography, colour, and composition, focusing on art direction, graphic design and craft with a sensitive signature. His work has been featured in Fubiz, étapes, inkygoodness, Mindsparkle Mag, Osso Magazine, Ello Underscore, Notes on Design, Fahrenheit Magazine, Designerd, Domestika, Daylighted, Partfaliaz among others.
8. Mark Niemeijer
Mark Niemeijer is an art director and graphic designer from the Netherlands. In 2015 he founded Open Studio, office for graphic design and typography, mainly focusing on visual identities. Through Soft Machine - an independent type foundry - Mark designs, develops and releases retail and custom typefaces.
"At Open Studio we strive to make meaningful work for our clients, for ourselves, and for society. We value a deep understanding of our clients and their needs. Together with them we create thoughtful design solutions across multiple platforms. Our visual language is supported by a process of thorough research, strategy development, experimentation, and evaluation."
9. Mark Hickox
Mark Hickox is a freelance hand-letterer & multidisciplinary designer with 3 years of lettering and type experience. At his core, he’s a type geek, dog dad, and ramen aficionado. Mark is a Denver raised designer currently living and working in South Korea teaching English and Calligraphy.
10. Lucas Graßmay
Lucas Graßmay is a graphic design student, currently enrolled at HTK-Academy of Design in Hamburg, Germany. After finishing his apprenticeship as a ship mechanic and after taking on various jobs on the side he turned to what has always been his life passion: design, and all things creative. Much of his work is an enthusiastic tribute to the aesthetics of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, which fascinates him profoundly. Going strong at finding his way in the contemporary design scene, he loves to work closely with his clients, in the music business, the publishing world, and elsewhere. He spends his spare time reading books on graphic design from all over the world.
11. Michael Bagnardi
Michael Bagnardi is a brand designer and typographer living in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Communications Design in 2014. Today, he spends his time designing for Turner Duckworth's New York studio and developing typefaces for his foundry, BurnType.
12. Nikita Iziev
Nikita Iziev is a Russian-born, London-based Graphic Designer, currently attending Ravensbourne University, with a strong focus on typographic approaches in static & kinetic graphic design.
His goal is to further blur the lines between digital and print through research, experimentation, and development.
13. Gabriella Thompson
Gabriella Thompson is a hiker, prayer, climber, and nap-taker. She is based in California, but lives and works from anywhere, be that a tent in the mountains or a coffee shop across the globe. When she is not talking to strangers, exploring outdoors, or learning languages, she designs.
14. Xtian Miller
Xtian Miller is an interdisciplinary designer with over 10 years of experience focused on interaction design and development. Originally from the UK and now residing in Detroit, he has collaborated with the likes of F500 companies such as FCA, Ford, Lear, and Mercedes to help craft original digital experiences.
He holds a BA (Hons) degree in Graphic Design and was formerly Design Lead at SOtech and Art Director at Moncur. He currently works with inventors at Vectorform and serves on the board of directors at AIGA Detroit. Besides creating posters and custom typography in his spare time, Xtian is the founder of Attack The Front; a resource to empower creatives, creator of Emergence.js; a popular JavaScript plugin, and writes regularly on the subject of creativity and productivity.
15. Olga Vladova
Olga Vladova works as a Senior Designer at Y&R. Originally from Ukraine, she came to the United States as a teenager. Olga speaks fluent Russian, Ukrainian, and almost-fluent Polish.
She studied graphic design and art history at Queens College. She loves anything to do with fashion and everything to do with design. Olga’s favorite activities are traveling and walking—she’s happiest when she can combine the two.
16. Alex Geoffrey (Pref)
Pref is a British typographic artist, well known for his multi-layered lettering style, and the incorporation of key vernacular phrases. His multi-layering style means that as an element of deciphering is introduced, the viewer is being asked to disentangle images and meanings from the artwork. Pref has developed his role and reputation as a graffiti artist over 20 years, and trained initially at Chelsea College of Art before going on to work in graphic design. The clear linear elements of his work and Pref's evolving interest in typography trespass across the borders of fine and graphic art in energetic and intriguing ways, and his work is highly regarded for its ingenious examination of the way we use and perceive lettering.
17. Benoit Ollive
Benoit Ollive a.k.a. Graphicfury has always been hand-drawing letters, fascinated by their structure and balance. The art of tag brought this French Art Director into the world of typography and lettering at a young age and he never stopped drawing since. Endlessly repeating with different tools, new combinations for letters to flow in the streets as on commissioned pieces.
18. Juan Carlos Pagan
Juan Carlos Pagan is a New York based Artist, Designer, Typographer, and Creative Director. He received his BFA from Parsons School of Design in 2006, and completed his post-graduate studies at Cooper Union in 2011. Juan has been honored for his work by The Type Directors Club, Comm Arts, ADC, One Show, Cannes Lions, Clios, Fastco, and Print Magazine.
In 2013 Juan won the prestigious Art Directors Club Young Gun Award, honoring designers under 30. That same year he was named top of Adweek‘s Talent 100 and was the cover & featured story. Juan was also nominated for Print Magazine’s New Visual Artist 20 Under 30 that same year.
He is currently a founding partner of the Creative Studio & Artist Representation Agency Sunday Afternoon based in New York City, and was formerly the Head of Design of 72andSunny NY.
19. Margaret Fu
Margaret Fu is an art director in New York City, having designed print and digital campaigns for clients such as Citi, Canon, LG, Scotts, and GILT. When she's not making ads, she spends much of her time hand lettering and practicing her hand at calligraphy. Otherwise, you'll find her perusing through stationery stores in search of new tools and mediums to experiment with.
The Opening Reception is sponsored by Kooksoondang Brewery