Project Description:
CHUN, an independent clothier, was looking to build a world class fashion start-up. The importance of his Korean background was a requirement while starting with logo development which quickly grew to art direction, web design, and construction of the garments. The cultural fusion between his 20 years in the United States and his childhood years growing up in Korea was a pivotal moment for creating branding requirements and guidelines, which flourished into abstract art pieces, that can be seen throughout and became a foundation for the brand identity.
Logo construction brought about several key design details that deeply reflect the owner as well as his Korean history. The typography abstractly represents the Korean lettering system, in a way that many forms are repeated, but represent different aspects of the language. The concentric circles and straight lines represent the quality of precision and measurements necessary for creating fashion that is capable to outlast various seasonal trends.
Countless secondary logo options were explored, the last visual shows the sound "CHU" in Korean, highly abstracted, followed by "UN" to continue the idea of a fusion of cultures and countries.
The design elements were initially inspired by the research of unique stitching techniques, that could be done by hand or by machine. Once sketched out and taken digital, iterations led to the patterns displayed, being capable of fitting in a digital space, print campaigns, and even evoked within the clothing.
When I was younger, I would always draw and doodle on notebooks instead of taking notes during class. Recently "zentangles" became a mainstream popularity for kids and adults alike, as a creative and meditative practice to help clear the mind. During a volunteering outing to the local middle-school art students, the teacher asked me to sketch out some "zentangles" to show the students. I produced only one at that particular time, but saw the value in its abstraction, line quality, and that it uniquely fit with the previous inspiration of research from the stitching techniques. I generated over 20 different variations of these art pieces, to arrive at six of them, slowly morphing into more complexity, to represent the duality of growing up from a child to an adult as well as being uprooted by your family to move to another country.
