TYPOJANCHI saisai 2018-2019 International Typography Biennale took place between Nov. 1- 6 at the Culture Station Seoul 284. It aimed to establish a governing discourse ahead of TYPOJANCHI 2019 International Typography Biennale, as a pre-biennale in preparation for next year.
The theme of the two pre-biennales and the biennale that follow this year and next year is ‘Typography and Objects’. Jin Dallae & Park Woohyuk, (artistic directors, TYPOJANCHI saisai 2018-2019) commented that ‘Typography, which used to be the only type of material, uses things, really everything, today as material. The Typo Biennale will be an opportunity to think about the expansion of typography as related to 'everything' as well as to “type”’. In this pre-biennale, typography was expanded in its relationship to ‘things and objects’ through lectures, workshops, research exhibitions and publications. The name of each event is borrowed from the primary form of things: ‘The Round’, which showed the main keywords the 17 artists have studied as an exhibition, ‘the Triangle’ was explored in a series of workshops led by Damien Poulain, Raphaël Garnier and Jonathan Castro, ‘the Square’, was a lecture based on the result of the workshop, and ‘the Shapeless’ published the proceeds of the events as a publication.
In the exhibition, the tools used for typography work were notable, such as the work of paying attention to the relationship between objects and typography, such as engravings and definitions of the ‘Stationary’ of Rohwajeong. Yang-Jang, a participant group of designers represented in the exhibition, noted that ‘For typography designers, typography is a way of explaining how the formative forms of fonts relate to each other. We wanted to create a harmonious result using only the formative elements, excluding a system of language.’