A Proposed Font Distinguishing Element Categorization for Improvement of the Korean Font Classification System

Abstract

Background The advancing font production environment catalyzed the development of diverse typefaces and a convenient environment to use them. However, a major problem is that the current Korean font classification systems and their standards are not reflecting this reality. This is because the current systems fail to provide integrated and organic classification standards due to the present excessively rigid and outdated classification standards, and because of insufficient in-depth studies on standards for the classification of various fonts and how they impact each other. Therefore, as part of a study on the Korean font classification systems that are causing the problems, this study seeks to explore and present the major font classification standards necessary to update the systems and the detailed distinguishing elements associated with these standards. Methods The three current font classification systems were examined to identify their problems and to explore the options for improvement. Then, these classification standards were analyzed to corroborate the font distinguishing features that are used in those classification systems. In the preliminary studies that follow, existing studies were reviewed to find out how thoroughly these studies addressed and discussed these font distinguishing features. The analysis for identifying the distinguishing features of Korean fonts was conducted in four main directions: (1) Analysis of font-related design application requirements; (2) Analysis of font-related copyrights; (3) Literary examination of handwriting analysis; and (4) Analysis of distinguishing characteristics to be considered in creating Korean fonts. (referred to the glyphs user manual) Results Four major classification standards that are the most comprehensive and broadly applicable, have been identified through the analyses on related subjects based on the distinguishing characteristics featured in existing classification systems: the skeleton as the frame; the space related to the distance and size of individual letter; the weight that corresponds to the thickness of strokes; and the shape that is related to font families. The subcategories of these distinguishing characteristics include: Frame (length of stroke, angle of stem, curve, slant, junction, section, height of side stem, position of syllabic block, height of consonant, number of strokes, writing method, structure, and width); (2) Space (distance between consonant and vowel, width of syllabic block, position of syllabic block, center line, width, and outline); (3) Weight (thickness of stroke and comparative thickness of stroke); and (4) Shape (presence of the point of a serif, junction, shape of morphemes, writing tool, method, and flow). Conclusions This study is meaningful in that it faithfully examines the font distinguishing characteristics that are used in the current font classification systems and uses the analysis results to propose a font classification standard as a major classification standard in the most comprehensive and broad direction. It is believed that this study can contribute to improving the closed problem in which one typeface has to belong only to one classification system due to excessively specific criteria of the current classification systems. © This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted educational and noncommercial use, provided the original work is properly cited.