Jaehoon Choi revives a series of optical illustrations from a 1728 encyclopedia

Studio Simdo is a black & white photography studio located in Seochon, one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Seoul, South Korea. Their typographic identity, created by local designer Jaehoon Choi, revolves around Luzi Type Foundry’s Messina Sans and a series of optical illustrations from the 1728 encyclopedia ‘Cyclopædia: or, An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences’ by Ephraim Chambers. The book was one of the first general encyclopedias to be produced in English and was intended to be a ‘course of ancient and modern learning’.

The sans serif logotype is typeset simply to accentuate the repetitive rounded letterforms in the name. A ‘clamp’ corner shape, a reference to equipment used in the photography studio, is used repetitively to create structure in the busy, typographic layouts. Numbers pulled from the grayscale value system (00-10 or 00%-100%) also appear throughout to add a layer of visual detail. The original hand-drawn illustrations from ‘Cyclopædia…’ have been redrawn in vector form and applied to printed goods that include single-use cameras, posters and signage.

Jaehoon Choi