Case Study — 부적 Talisman
The Shape
of Absence
Carrying the visual language of Korean talismans into modern mediums.
00 — Film · The Shape of Absence, 2025Full screen ↗
01 — Origin
“Born from a curiosity, and an inquiry into the unknown.”
We attach our beliefs and fears to objects as we grow up. I wanted to understand the forms those objects take, and what happens when they start to disappear.02 — Context
Every culture gives its fears a form.
In Korea — 부적 (Bujeok)Bright yellow paper, blood-red ink, often written in Chinese characters or symbols few can actually read.
In Western mediaDreamcatchers, lucky charms, four-leaf clovers. Familiar, commercial, and largely stripped of fear.
03 — Problem
A visual language fading into taboo.
Talismans were slowly being pushed out of everyday culture, increasingly seen as superstitious. They were a big part of my cultural life growing up, and their visual language fascinated me even when I didn’t fully understand its meaning.04 — Idea
Keep the visual language, change the medium it lives in.
Bridging the traditional — yellow paper, red ink, glyphs that carry belief — with new forms of expression made for how we see things today.05 — Process
From brush, to typeface, to motion.
01ResearchStudying traditional bujeok: their colour, layout and glyphs.
02Hand explorationInk and brush studies on paper to find my own talisman marks.
03Typeface systemDigitising those marks into Yoo Talisman: letters, numerals, punctuation.
04MotionBringing the system to life as moving image.
Fig. 01 — Process archive11 imagesView +
Fig. 01Hand exploration, poster studies and film frames
06 — Typeface
Yoo Talisman.
Brush marks digitised into a working type system: letters, numerals and punctuation, built to carry the talisman’s visual language into any medium.Fig. 02–05Yoo Talisman — type system
07 — Stills
Selected stills.
Frames from the film.Fig. 06–08Scenes 01 — 03
08 — Reflection
Not only a practice to preserve, but a form of traditional evolution.
Preservation doesn’t have to mean freezing something in place. A visual language survives by moving into the mediums people actually live in.