Inspired from personal experiences, growing up in a Korean-French-English-speaking environment, this research project investigates this specific case of trilingualism with a (typo)graphic approach.

Korean, French and English: although these are three different languages, they involve (only) two writing systems: Latin and Hangeul. This dissonance between trilingualism and biscriptualism leads to questioning the ‘typographic matchmaking’ process – a common design pattern that seeks to harmonize different writing systems, mainly noticeable in multiscript type design or editorial design. This research project aspires to explore an opposite stance to ‘matchmaking’ by experimenting the ‘matchbreaking’ idea, which puts the emphasis instead on distinguishing each language, and magnifying a certain linguistic diversity.

Our current situation in regards of globalization enhances multilingualism, especially among diaspora communities. These groups, which mix words and expressions from different languages, contribute to the development of hybrid micro-languages. However, this mode of communication tends to remain vernacular. Apart from being used as a mean for personal note-taking or fast communication via sms and chats, the written form of these hybrid languages seems limited to an ephemeral writing. While aiming to go beyond (typo)graphic aspects, this research experiments the written form of trilingualism to investigate this transition from vernacular to literature.