Sunday, November 17, 2013

장풍: Palm wind

You know those hand dryers you see in restrooms? Here's a great logo that I saw on one. In martial arts movies there's this recurring theme of using your "chi" to defeat your opponent. In video games, there's even this idea of a fireball that characters can shoot from their hands. This, for example, is Ryu's "hadoken" (JPNS: はどうけん, 波動拳).

Korean has its own expression for this -- the "palm wind" (장풍, 掌風). As you can see in the top picture, the logo's designer rendered the "ㅈ" in the first syllabel 장 as a little man with his palm out. And it looks as though he's "blowing" the right side of the "風" away.

It's not often that I understand Korean marketing. When I do, it's pretty exciting.

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