Typing the Alien

DAEKI & JUN Studio, DEFAMILIARIZING HANGEUL: TYPE RES FAMILY, Typography-Motion Application-Series, 2020 Design Awards winner.

Alphabets are the building blocks of language, and like any foundation, they shift and change with time.

In his 1962 novel, the legendary iconoclast William S. Burroughs, declared language to be “a virus from outer space.” An outré concept, no doubt, but one that was later picked up by another iconoclast: the multimedia artist Laurie Anderson. It is a concept; moreover, that most certainly has some relevancy to our currently viral society.

Language as a living entity, one that mutates and changes as it interacts with other languages, as it is filtered down to generations and through technology like the Internet is at the core of DAEKI & JUN Studio’s Design Award winning Typography-Motion Application: Defamiliarizing Hangeul: Type Res Family.

Produced for the National Hangeul Museum, Seoul, DAEKI & JUN Studio’s typography animates the transformations Hangeul has undergone, as it inhabits and is affected (infected?) by digital media. The result is an alphabet made strange, even alien.

If you have an out-of-this-world typographic project, or another award-worthy piece of design, time is running out to get your application in. The deadline is March 5, 2021.