joseon stamps

project overview

the brief: design a series of stamps, with historically accurate digital illustrations and symbols drawn from korea's joseon dynasty, as a study purely in shape. the challenge was fidelity through form alone: each symbol had to stay true to its source while working as a clean, contemporary graphic, small enough for a stamp and consistent as one family. research began with joseon ceramics, textiles and everyday artifacts, extracting the symbols they carry. each was then constructed in illustrator the way a traditional sketch is built, from basic geometric shapes refined into the final form: a precise, unbreakable vector, every curve traceable to its underlying geometry, so it can be taken apart and rebuilt without losing accuracy. an accompanying pamphlet shows the work, tracing each symbol's history and the construction behind its shapes.