Interview about Josef Koudelka Gypsies Book Design, winner of the A' Print and Published Media Design Award 2020
Josef Kudelka, a world-renowned photographer, has held his photo exhibitions in many countries around the world. After a long wait, a gypsy-themed Kudelka exhibition was finally held in Korea, and his photo book was made. As it was the first exhibition in Korea, there was a request from the author that he wanted to make a book so that he could feel Korea. Hangeul and Hanok are Korean letters and architecture that represent Korea. Text refers to the mind and architecture means the form. Inspired by these two elements, wanted to design a way to express Korea's characteristics.
View detailed images, specifications, and award details on A' Design Award & Competition website.
View Design DetailsJosef Koudelka’s exhibition will be travelling to South Korea for the first time. In preparation for the exhibition, Koudelka travelled to Korea and conducted in-depth interviews with Korean designers to select the designers for the exhibition book. I also met with Koudelka for an in-depth interview. As this is the first time the exhibition will be held in Korea, Koudelka wanted the book design to be the most representative of the country’s character. Koudelka said that the drum design for the Gypsies exhibition has been designed to represent the characteristics of the country where the exhibition is being held. After the in-depth interview, I thought a lot about how I could realise a book design that best represented Korean characteristics. My answer was to incorporate elements of Korean culture, such as architecture and characters, into the book design. I presented my design plan and was ultimately selected by Koudelka. A country’s character is most clearly expressed through its cultural elements, which are the ones that best represent it and make it the most distinctive. Many countries have their own unique cultures, and people around the world are bound to be interested in them. I thought that Korean culture would be the same, and that incorporating Korean cultural elements into the book design would create a book design by a western photographer with Korean culture, creating a good combination of East and West. I think this proposal was in line with the direction of the book design that the artist wanted to create.
We first thought about what elements of Korean culture would set it apart. When we travel, the first thing we notice when we arrive is the architecture. There is a huge difference in architecture between the East and the West. These differences make you feel different and fall in love with the place. We thought that a Gypsies book design with elements of Korean architecture would make for a unique book design. Just as a house is built with pillars on the floor and a roof over it, a book is built by stacking pages one by one. The Gypsies book design was also designed as a piece of architecture with Korean elements. If I Koudelka’s photographic content is the interior element, the elements of Korean architecture are the exterior. The concept was to combine the look of Korean architecture with the content of Western authors. The most distinctive feature of Korean architecture is the hanok, or traditional Korean house. A hanok is characterised by its structure, which is made up of wooden beams fitted together horizontally and vertically like blocks on top of a foundation stone. The key is that they are fitted together like blocks, rather than nailed or glued together. Also, hanoks do not have glass windows like Western buildings. They do have doors and windows, but the doors and windows are covered with a traditional Korean paper called ‘changhoji’. As a result, you can’t see into a hanok from the outside, or out from the inside. This feature is especially noticeable at night. When you switch on a light inside a room, you can only see the faint silhouette of the inside from the outside, which is very attractive. It is characterised by an indirect, rather than direct, transmission of light, which gives it an ethereal charm. If these elements of traditional Korean architecture were applied to a book design by a Western artist, we expected that the result would be a book design with Korean characteristics. This resulted in a book design with strong regional characteristics that Koudelka requested, and a design that is different from Koudelka’s other “Gypsies” book designs.
A traditional Korean house, a hanok, is not as large as a typical Western structure. The size of the book design is also partly inspired by the architecture. The hanok’s characteristic modesty and modesty became a reference point for the size of the book design. Also, photo exhibition books are usually large in size, but I wanted it to be small enough to be held in one hand and viewed comfortably. I wanted it to be a book that can be carried around and easily viewed anywhere, not a book that has to be placed on a desk because of its large size, and Koudelka agreed and strongly wanted it. The grate of a hanok is made by fitting wood in a lattice pattern. I was looking for a material to represent the lattice pattern of the hanok grate. I decided that gauze would be the most suitable material for the binding, as it would allow me to realise the idea of expressing the lattice pattern of the hanok grate and the idea of applying the material of hanbok, traditional Korean clothing, to the book design.
When you look at the windows of a hanok in the evening after the sun has gone down and the moon has risen, the silhouettes on the translucent paper windows look warm, soft, and beautiful in the light of the fire. The paper windows from the outside are mysterious and invite a lot of questions because you can’t directly see what’s inside. I wanted to apply this feature of hanok to the book design to make the content inside the book mysterious and curious.
As the exhibition is taking place in Korea and I wanted the book to have a rich Korean feel, I suggested that Koudelka actively use the Korean alphabet, Hangul, in the book's title, which she readily accepted. To make the Hangeul look stronger and more impressive, we used a very bold Hangeul and processed it with hot foil stamping. The alphabet is represented in white on a black fabric, while the alphabet is stepped back with thin lines, black, as if it were shining from the inside of a window. This allowed the Korean alphabet, which is unique to Korea, to be on the foreground, unlike exhibitions in other countries, and set the book apart from other books. As I I Koudelka’s only book with an active representation of Hangul, the book’s content is presented in a vessel with the regional and cultural characteristics of Korea.
Communication is the most important part of the design process. Close communication between the person who commissioned the project and the person who is realising it reduces the margin of error of each other’s ideas. Since Koudelka is in France and I am in Korea, communication was even more important due to the huge distance. Through close communication, we tried to understand each other's ideas, which helped us to reduce the margin of error to a minimum.
As the exhibition is the first of its kind in Korea, we wanted to emphasise its sense of place. We decided that if we incorporated elements that could represent Korean characteristics into the book's design, the book would be able to fully represent the context of I Koudelka’s exhibition in Korea. We were inspired by “hanok” (a traditional Korean house), “hangeul” (the Korean alphabet), and “hanbok” (traditional Korean clothing), and applied each of these elements to the book design to show Korean characteristics and sense of place.
As the exhibition is held in Korea, the primary audience for the content is naturally Korean, so the typography for the book was also designed with the Korean audience in mind. The Korean typography was completed first, and then the typography of the alphabet was adapted to the Korean typography. We tried to make the typesetting and layout reflect the design characteristics of East Asia, especially Korea. There will be some differences from Western typography. Since Hangeul is not used in many countries or regions outside of Korea, you may find the typography with Hangeul as the main character to be both familiar and strange.
A photographic work of art is not just about seeing a print. It is a work of art that contains the artist’s intentions and the emotions of the individual viewer that come together to move you. I think the same is true for books. The artist’s intentions are expressed in the form of a book using paper. The tactile sensation of a book also creates a different experience for the reader. Cloth-covered boards, translucent paper, and gauze binding allow the reader to feel sensations and emotions from the form of the book before they can appreciate the content. These emotions can be felt differently by different people. We wanted the book’s appearance, with its Korean elements, to indirectly give the reader an experience that is characteristic of Korea.
A book is not just a collection of sheets of paper, stacked and bound together. I think of a book as a house or a building that has a different structure depending on the concept and is made up of paper and content based on that structure. The exterior of the book is the exterior of the building, and the content inside the book is the interior of the building. Therefore, the content of the book determines the appearance of the book, which acts as a vessel to hold the content. The combination of the exterior and interior elements of a book is what makes it a complete structure. The combination of the exterior and interior elements of a book is what makes it a complete architecture. Just as world-renowned architects design buildings by fusing elements from different places, cultures, and races, I think the same is true for book design. This will continue to create a different kind of content architecture made of paper, and many people will be moved and inspired by the results.
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