Cloud Connection (구름 잇기)
Sam Van Hooydonck
Antwerp
About
Sam Van Hooydonck is a graphic and type designer. With a keen interest and appreciation for type design, typography, editorial design, and Korean culture, their practice is driven by a curiosity for cultural exchange and the multilingual facets of design. Rooted in research, their work approaches design as a form of listening — a way of understanding visual traditions other than one's own before contributing to them. As a Western designer drawn to Korean visual culture, Sam is particularly interested in the space where these two traditions meet and what can be learned from navigating that distance thoughtfully.
Project
Gureum (구름) is a Korean display font based on Asian cloud patterns — Gureum being the Korean word for cloud. It is a medium for connecting my practice as a Western type designer with the Korean design industry and its distinctive visual language, to engage and converse with its practitioners in an educated and mutually respectful manner. As my interest and appreciation for South Korea grew through its pop culture, the country’s visual culture started to influence my own design practice. This led to further research about Korean type design and what role I might play in it. Beyond my own practice, this project is meant to introduce Korean type design to a broader audience through my own experience of designing Gureum. This font is my first personal encounter with the Korean writing system, and I hope it might evoke the same wonder for those who encounter it.