Skip to the menu / 본문가기

The Expansive Story of the 『Sandoll GothicNeo』 Series

Article 2024.02.06

Sandoll has done it again!

 

Sandoll's bestseller, the 『Sandoll GothicNeo』 series, includes "Sandoll GothicNeo1, 2, 3," "Sandoll GothicNeo Unicode1, 2, 3," as well as "Sandoll GothicNeo Condensed," and "Sandoll GothicNeo Extended." This font series, featuring a large family of 7-9 types, has become so familiar that its presence is felt strongly, maintaining the closest relationship with users.

The 『Sandoll GothicNeo』 series is distinguished by four main features: 'design made with user participation,' 'the first Korean font harmonized with other characters centered around Hangul,' 'offering a wide range of family options,' and 'designed for ease of use in digital environments.'

Let's delve deeper into the incredible specifications of the 『Sandoll GothicNeo』 series.

 

 

Birth of the 『Sandoll GothicNeo』 Series

Developing a new body text font has long been a goal for Sandoll. While fonts are generally divided into headline and body text types, most new releases are for headlines due to the complex, time-consuming, and costly process of creating body text fonts. Not many foundries take on such resources to develop body text fonts.

Especially at that time, Sandoll was dedicated to developing exclusive fonts for Samsung. This extended to developing exclusive fonts for media outlets like JoongAng Ilbo and Chosun Ilbo, making it challenging to focus on body text fonts for general users. The exclusive fonts for JoongAng Ilbo and Chosun Ilbo were designed as body text but were licensed only to these corporations. It was at this point that the 『Sandoll GothicNeo』 series was planned. With a mission to represent Korea's leading font foundry, Sandoll consolidated its know-how in creating body text fonts to introduce a new font suitable for the digital age.

 

 

Harmony of Emotion and Neutrality

Sans-serif fonts are neutral, making them versatile. However, their simple and modern design can often overlook emotional aspects. This is why the globally popular 「Helvetica」, used as the default font for Apple Macintosh and the New York subway system, was designed to be an unbiased, neutral font.

The 『Sandoll GothicNeo』 series aimed to accommodate this aspect, but simplifying Hangul to just vertical and horizontal lines leads to a geometric shape. Also, 「Helvetica」 designed over fifty years ago, shows limitations. There was also an undeniable demand from users who missed the analog era's emotions in the digitalized world.

In tis direction, the 『Sandoll GothicNeo』 series preserved the elegance of curves in Hangul, maintaining its unique angles and adding emotional elements to compensate for the weaknesses of sans-serif fonts.

 

 

Hangul-Centered, User-Centered

A defining characteristic of the 『Sandoll GothicNeo』 series is its Hangul-centered design. It might seem obvious for a Hangul font to center around Hangul, but it's rare to find instances like the 『Sandoll GothicNeo』 series, where Hangul design is prioritized, and Latin alphabets are selected and refined accordingly, with Kanji being designed directly to fit this concept.

 

For the Latin characters in the 『Sandoll GothicNeo』 series, fonts that best matched the structure and skeleton of Hangul were selected after careful testing. 「Guardian Sans Headline」 was chosen based on its contemporary design, narrow letter width, and large x-height, which is essential since Hangul needs to fit within the two baselines similar to uppercase Latin letters.

 

Perfect harmony is hard to achieve without co-development. The chosen 「Guardian Sans Headline」, while harmonious overall, had details, such as stroke finishes, that did not suit the specifics of the Hangul typesetting environment. After officially resolving the license issues with the original creator, the design was modified to fit the Hangul concept. All modifications were finalized after review by the original designer, Christian Schwartz, and the modified version was named 「Sandoll GuardianSans」.

Updated Character set

Proportional Numbers to Monospaced Numbers

 

The 『Sandoll GothicNeo』 series doesn't stop there, it's been expanded as the 『Sandoll GothicNeo Unicode』 series. It can be seen as a kind of pro version that focuses on user usability and their feedback after the release of the 『Sandoll GothicNeo』 series. Developed with Korean full character set: from 2,350 characters to 11,172 characters, 『Sandoll GothicNeo Unicode』 can now freely express all modern syllables that were previeously impossible. It has been upgraded not only by simply adding characters, but also by delicately adjusting counter and centerline to achieve a more perfect form. In addition, numbers have been adjusted to monospaced widths considering usability.

 

Proportional Number(above) and Monospaced Nubmer(below)

 

 

Designing with Full Force

The 『Sandoll GothicNeo』 series aimed to create a more modern sans-serif font, reflecting user demands and trends differently from the existing 「Sandoll Gothic」. We aimed for modernity and simplicity without sacrificing validity, enahncing stroke feel and scuptural completeness. Additionally, 「Sandoll GothicNeo1」 was crafted with a character width of 92% based on pre-survey results, which may initially give a slim and neat impression. However, we designed it to ensure clear legibility even at small sizes by providing sufficient internal space within characters. This font incorporates user demands and research findings into the fundamental structure of body text fonts.

 

Sandoll has had plenty of experience developing custom fonts for enterprise client's request, but the case of dedicating full effort to design a body text font for general users was a first with the 『Sandoll GothicNeo』 series. The duration from planning to release wasn't short either. The initial goal of the 『Sandoll GothicNeo』 series project was to target professional designers and create fonts tailored for the DTP(Digital Textile Prining) environment. However, with the paradigm shift in multimedia, there was a strong belief that there would be increased demand for body text fonts in the multimedia market. As a result, even before its official release, it was adopted in products from companies like Apple, LG, and Pantech, and was even used in the <Steve Jobs> e-book.

 

 

Expanding Choice

The 『Sandoll GothicNeo1』 currently competes with other commercial Gothic and serif fonts, featuring a total of nine weights based on a database that analyzed font families. These nuanced weights focus less on dramatic expressiveness and more on precise tuning. Depending on preference, using Regular can convey a calm, bright, and light tone, while using Semi Bold can impart a stronger, firmer color tone.

 

Weight focused to purpose and usage

 

Moving forward, 『Sandoll GothicNeo2』 and 『Sandoll GothicNeo3』 introduced structural changes to diversify the expressions of the basic typeface. This arrangement not only facilitates use in editorial design for body text, captions, and headlines but also aids in a broad range of typographical applications in graphic work.

Built on Sandoll's accumulated expertise and pioneering spirit, the 『Sandoll GothicNeo』 series aims to broaden the choices available to designers.

 

 

Author: Sandoll Planning and Operations Team