66 Street Type Findings

From the workshop signs of the increasingly gentrified Mullae-dong district and the backyard print shops around Euljiro Printing Alley to the student-oriented streets of Hongdae and slightly faded nightlife districts such as Sinchon, Seoul presents a remarkably broad spectrum of individual public lettering.

Hand-painted and manually produced signs have become increasingly rare, yet the diversity of letterforms remains striking. Within Hangeul — a writing system that can at first appear highly constructed and geometric — the urban environment reveals an extraordinary range of typographic expression, from functional workshop signage to bold and highly expressive commercial lettering.

The series The Good, the Bad and the Ugly brings together typographic finds from a range of cities. The photographs present them as they were encountered: unembellished, unedited and without aesthetic or qualitative judgement. Rather than distinguishing between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ or ‘ugly’ design, the focus is on typography as a direct expression of everyday urban culture.