South Korea-based designer Hwain Jie translates musical sampling into a typographic system, building each letter of the word SAMPLE on a 5×5 grid and running it through four cycles of iterative exchange until every character contains traces of the others.
Sampling in music means taking something, changing it and passing it forward. Hwain Jie asked what that process would look like if applied to letterforms. The answer is SAMPLE: a modular typography project where each character is built on a 5×5 grid and repeatedly borrows from, and lends to, the others across four cycles of iterative exchange. By the end, each letter contains traces of itself filtered through the influence of the whole. It is a closed loop of visual mutation.
“The word SAMPLE works as both a method and a metaphor,” Jie says, “and I was interested in letting it define how the project develops. Each letter borrows from another, so the process mirrors sampling, taking something, changing it, and passing it forward.”
The project was developed as part of a modular typography workshop titled Systems and Freedom, led by Randy Yeo of Practice Theory, with a brief encouraging rule-based design. Jie set the rules, activated the system and followed where it led. “This project sits somewhere between control and unpredictability,” he says. “Once the rules were set, the form started to expand towards outcomes that were beyond my initial prediction.”
The publication format became a direct response to that expansion. As the word SAMPLE grows through each iteration, a conventional B5 format could not contain it. The solution is a fold-out publication that closes to a standard B5 footprint of 176 by 250mm but opens to 528 by 1000mm across 24 B5 panels. The physical experience of unfolding the publication enacts the same logic as the typographic system: a closed, manageable form that unfolds into something considerably larger than expected.
Hwain Jie is a South Korea-based designer working across typography, art direction, web and publication design, driven by processes and systems that allow unexpected forms to emerge.
Website: worksbyfine.netlify.app Instagram: @hwainjie
SAMPLE, 2024. Fold-out publication. Closed: 176 × 250mm. Open: 528 × 1000mm, 24 B5 panels. Developed as part of Systems and Freedom workshop, Practice Theory. Photography: Hwain Jie.
