Montessori

Participating in education, as a student or teacher, brings energy to life. Workroom’s members have also made time to contribute. Kim Hyungjin taught graphic design and typography at Kaywon University of Art and Design, Ewha Womans University, the University of Seoul, and elsewhere. His last course at Ewha even received perfect scores from students. Park Hwalsung taught writing at Kaywon. Since 2021, Kim Nuyoun has taught “Writing for Makers” at PaTI. Min Guhong, who received formal Montessori education as a child, runs New Order, a self-described “liberal arts course for modern people,” with support from Studio Pie and Tastehouse. (New Order began as a private seminar at Workroom in 2016, and its curriculum has been refined year by year.) He also teaches at PaTI, whose founding he helped with.

Single and Double Corner Brackets

A book’s body text uses various punctuation marks to distinguish and emphasize information alongside letters. The period marking the end of the preceding sentence, and the parentheses supplementing the Korean word for punctuation in the original, are good examples. These marks are essential to structuring information, yet often make a text unnecessarily complicated. Imagine an extreme situation you will nevertheless encounter once or twice: quotations, emphasis, essays, books, artworks, and exhibitions mingling word by word, phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence. Essential periods joined by commas, question marks, exclamation marks, and even colons. And English, Chinese characters, and kana added as well. In preparing the Workroom Style Guide, Workroom combined marks with common properties: single corner brackets (「」), used for essay titles, and single angle brackets (〈〉), used for artworks, became single corner brackets; double corner brackets (『』), used for books, and double angle brackets (《》), used for exhibitions, became double corner brackets. This reduced both the reader’s confusion and the maker’s effort.

The Beautiful World of Practicality

Launched on July 13, 2018, with Everyday Sabotage—edited by Workroom Press, written by the US Office of Strategic Services, and translated by Hong Huibeom—the Practical Series pursues the beautiful world of practicality. Its motto is: “We discover material that was practical in the past but no longer functions only practically today, and material that was not practical in the past but functions practically today. We call ourselves a general-interest series for contemporary readers that invites reflection on practicality. Welcome to the beautiful world of practicality.” Its first book, Everyday Sabotage, draws on the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, distributed during World War II by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to agents infiltrating enemy territory. It introduces methods anyone can practice in daily life, such as frequently holding unnecessary meetings or leaving lights on when going home. There are three main ways to use the book. One is to gather allies to trouble the enemy; another, conversely, is to identify and decisively remove the enemy secretly operating beside you. The third is to imagine the specialists in each field writing its entries and take the lead in securing future peace, learning from the tragedy of war. Naturally, its uses are as endless as the ways of defining an enemy, and the choice is entirely the reader’s. Shortly after publication, Maeil Business Newspaper unexpectedly reported that its contents had been discussed at Samsung Electronics’ global strategy meeting. Just as Everyday Sabotage approaches practicality through business, other volumes in the series approach it through fashion (Heavy Duty), music (The Manual: How to Have a Number One the Easy Way), and physical training (Get Tough!). Meanwhile, Min Guhong, who conceived the series, wanted the design work to be practical too: as quick as possible, without agonizing over it. With Kim Hyungjin, he established a design rule: put the title as large as possible in black on a white front cover, and a photograph of a simply cute animal on the back, neither representing nor suggesting the content. In this way, the Practical Series asks producers and consumers anew what practicality is, encompassing content, form, and production. Perhaps because of practicality’s vitality, the series was also included in the Library of Life, organized by Lee Jaeyoung for Typojanchi 2021: Turtle and Crane.

Words and Words

Since collaborating with Min Guhong Manufacturing, the one-person parasitic company run by Min Guhong, who joined in September 2016, Workroom has ventured into handling content online through web technology. Words and Words, introduced on Twitter on December 4, 2019, is one such effort. Running in Google Chrome, the program reveals a random quotation from a book published by Workroom Press or Workroom Spector whenever the user opens a new tab. Clicking it leads to the book’s introduction on the Workroom Press website. By guiding users toward book purchases, Words and Words also serves as a modest book-marketing tool. One user wrote on Twitter that it felt “like receiving the gift of an escape from work into reading.” The program follows the user’s computer clock, switching between day and night modes at 6 p.m. The current version is 0.9.6. If Workroom were a piece of software, Min Guhong Manufacturing would be something like a plug-in: it extends the software or supplies unexpected functions, and a plug-in may sometimes grow into a full-fledged program.

Literally a “Workroom”

Workroom, which marked its fifteenth anniversary in 2021, is fundamentally a profit-seeking company, but, as its name suggests, it is also a workroom gathering makers active in various fields. Provided members perform their assigned duties within their contracted hours, the studio actively encourages outside activities such as exhibitions, teaching, lectures, and writing. Many members have other occupations. Kim Nuyoun works as an artist with former Workroom designer Jeon Yongwan, and runs the publisher Oemil, through which she wrote and published Grid Eraser and Part. Min Guhong runs the one-person parasitic company Min Guhong Manufacturing—in other words, lives off Workroom—focusing on introducing things in various ways within and beyond art and design. Yoo Hyeonseon belongs to the photography-based project group Filed. Depending on the case, members’ outside activities naturally become collaborations with Workroom. It is a space where makers of many kinds, not simply editors and designers, gather to work. In a 2021 interview with Naver Design, Min Guhong described this environment: “Paradoxically, the precarious environment in which members are not yoked to the company and can leave at any time without regret or lingering attachment is what energizes Workroom. Few studios do publishing, planning, editing, design, website development, software production, education, and more, so it gives me considerable stimulation. I think it is why Workroom has survived without falling behind. And a healthy host is the best possible thing for Min Guhong Manufacturing.”

A Publication Called a Website

The familiar form of the paper book was completed with the invention of the codex over a thousand years ago. As content moved from scrolls into the codex, readers could access information more easily and quickly. Since then, only materials and production methods have diversified; the form of bound, cut sheets of paper remains unchanged. Today, publishing does not necessarily take place on paper. Releasing and introducing content online is also called “publishing.” (It is particularly significant that, as of 2021, the button for making a post public in WordPress, the world’s most widely used content management system [CMS], says “publish.”) Calling paper books “offline publications” and websites “online publications” no longer seems awkward. Websites were originally invented to let scientists share papers efficiently. They began, in other words, with print. Content that had been mere footnotes, marginal notes, and endnotes gained a new status through HTML’s <a> tag. Websites developed from paper books and supplemented their shortcomings: evolved paper books, in effect. If we group both as publications—if we believe that only the place where content resides has changed—some concerns surrounding the two media may be corrected or naturally resolved. On a website, content leaves the codex and returns to a scroll, moving across the screen vertically and horizontally. Beginning with websites for wie ein kino and Platm, Workroom expanded its publishing online in 2016, and the scope of content editing expanded with it. Almost every website produced by Workroom, including those of Workroom and Workroom Press, is a collaboration with Min Guhong Manufacturing. The attitude toward websites is, of course, no different from that toward paper books. “If one approach is to quickly learn and adopt the latest technologies, and another is to extend the foundations with a drill or hoe while exploring basic, fundamental techniques, Min Guhong Manufacturing belongs to the latter. Being at Workroom, I am familiar with graphic-design methods focused on typography and concepts. And since Min Guhong Manufacturing is neither Google nor Naver, its technical limits are clear. Recognizing those limits, I try to devise the best methods within what is possible. In my experience across various projects, most problems can be solved comfortably with basic, fundamental techniques alone. Of course, this presupposes that the content is properly handled.”

An Email Address That Doubles as an Employee Number

Choosing an email username today seems less important than choosing a social-media username. Even so, in a company, an email address is the official channel where a conversation begins. (It is best, in other words, to avoid commissioning work through social-media messages.) In business, it is customary to use one’s name in Latin letters, such as minguhong. Workroom members, however, receive numbers in the order they join, which automatically become both employee numbers and email usernames. When a member leaves, the number is permanently retired—at least until Workroom files for closure. As of 2021, Workroom has seven members, including contract staff. Number 1 belongs to photographer Park Junghoon, who was there in the early days; the most recently assigned number, 17, belongs to Hwang Heeyeon, who recently left. The numbers of founding members Kim Hyungjin, Park Junghoon, Park Hwalsung, and Lee Kyungsoo were determined by rock-paper-scissors, a method with history, tradition, and rationality.

Music Recommended (for an Editor, Designer, and Programmer)

Apurimac, released by German band Cusco in 1985. It clearly answers the question, “Can we travel through ancient Inca civilization with synthesizers alone?” With no lyrics, the album makes good background music for office work. Documentary-loving readers may find Flute Battle and Inca Dance especially familiar. Equally good is Twin Peaks Theme, composed and performed by American musician Angelo Badalamenti. The opening theme of the American television series that swept the 1990s brings back childhood memories whenever I watch, after learning that all seasons were available on Watcha. It is also a piece I would like to learn the piano again to play. For your information, the feeling is doubled when heard with the opening sequence directed by David Lynch and edited by Duwayne Dunham.

Noise

Noise levels in Workroom’s office rise briefly around 10–11 a.m., when members arrive. “Hello.” “Hello.” Then they approach zero for a while, rising again for occasional phone calls or meetings. Even when listening to music, each person uses earphones, so the level again approaches zero until about 7–8 p.m., when people leave. “Goodbye.” “Goodbye.” Unable to bear the silence, Kim Hyungjin sometimes attempts a joke to raise the decibels a little, but usually only Park Hwalsung or Min Guhong responds. It takes a thoroughgoing sense of humor to elicit even a small reaction from members absorbed in their work.

Working Hours

“Work will set you free. (Arbeit macht frei.)” Tragically, like the maxim over the main gate of Auschwitz, most people are destined to live as workers to make a living, and ultimately for freedom. With “work” in its very name, Workroom is inherently bound to confront its members’ balance between work and life. How should we work today? In the “post-COVID era,” many companies have begun questioning the familiar, traditional system in which a company maintains an office and its members work there. In an extreme example, one large Japanese company announced that it would eliminate its physical offices and use the money for operating and maintaining them to support employees working from home. Korea is known for having the second-longest working hours, after Mexico, among employees and the self-employed in OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. Yet Kim Nuyoun and Min Guhong have already been working four-day weeks since 2020 and 2021, respectively. As 2021 recorded Workroom’s highest sales since its founding, this offers some evidence that time spent in the office is not directly proportional to efficiency. The arrangement is therefore scheduled to expand to other members from 2022.

One Meter

Workroom members’ dedicated workspaces and conditions are identical regardless of position. Desks of the same size, the same model of chair and drawer unit, steel bookshelves behind them, and one meter between each space.

A Practical Website

A website functions not only as an online publication for reading content, but also as a tool. Its beauty therefore increases the more practically it works for producers as well as consumers. This goes beyond a single character nimbly combining information display with navigation and other functions; it reaches the stage of affecting the work itself. Here, the power of a content management system (CMS) comes into play. Much of thisisneverthisisneverthat, a book documenting ten years of the fashion brand thisisneverthat, consists of a list of some 3,000 products. A website proved useful for organizing a list containing many different fields. The varied contents of Typojanchi 2021: Turtle and Crane were also first organized on a website. These are good examples of a website leading a project from the front and standing arm in arm with a paper book.

Workroom 3.0

Time continues for Korea’s traditional large design agencies, such as Ahn Graphics and Hong Design, through periodic changes of directors or art directors. Their scale at least allows them to build a business history and acquire the possibility of outlasting time. How, then, does time continue for small studios that have deliberately parted with tradition and are building another tradition through being small and solid on a different plane—more immediately, for Workroom, one of their first generation? In other words, what will Workroom look like in ten years? Unless it strikes it rich in real estate or expands to the scale of a large agency, its options may be few. “We intend to keep devoting ourselves to design and publishing as we do now, as long as we can.” Or, “Oh, right. There used to be a studio called Workroom… Anyway, what should we have for lunch?” Or might it function as an incubator for makers, allowing them, as Min Guhong declared in the letter announcing that he would use 14@wkrm.kr until January 31, 2022, to “put what I heard and learned at Workroom to good use, quoting it and putting it into practice”?

Do You Have a Favorite Brand?

Apple is said to ask job applicants: “You have two eggs. How would you find the highest floor from which you can drop an egg without breaking it?” Judging whether you can work with the person sitting before you is difficult, even for the most discerning judge of character. Workroom would rather avoid it, but sometimes has no choice. After much thought, it decided to ask applicants: “Regardless of field, do you have a favorite brand?” Unexpected though it was, the question seemed capable of revealing, without further questions, not just taste but interests, spending scale, quick thinking, problem-solving ability, and even values and religious views. Unfortunately, not once did an answer work as intended.

Study of Pink

Fuchsine, known as “Pinky,” is a work exhibited at the now-closed legendary gallery Archive Bomm. It appears on several websites made with Seoul Museum of Art’s Nanji Art Studio. It resembles the ellipsis button widely used in UX design, enlarged about a thousandfold and brought into reality. Kim Hyungjin bought it for 200,000 won out of loyalty to Min Guhong and brought it into the office, but it is large and heavy enough that it must be leaned against something. First in front of Kim Hyungjin’s desk, then Park Hwalsung’s, it now stands beside a bookshelf near the meeting table. “Um… what is this?” Visitors sometimes ask on seeing Fuchsine. “Well, this is…” No one, not even Min Guhong, finds it easy to answer. Unless it ends up discarded on the street, it will remain a subject of study, like the title of Kim Nuyoun’s Study of Pink in Rainbow Sherbet, co-published by Archive Bomm and Workroom Spector in 2019.

The Bathroom Key

To use the bathroom at Workroom, one must go out through the yellow steel door and up half a flight. Be sure to take the key, both to open the door and to indicate that someone is inside. The bathroom key ring is probably the shared object members use most often. (Thinking about it while writing this, it really needs disinfecting.) The key ring bears the English spelling of “Min Guhong Manufacturing,” in English.

Things Workroom Does Not Have (as of January 2022)

Envelopes (they ran out long ago and no more were made), lunch together (members generally eat separately), company dinners (which do not particularly matter, or are better absent), individual extensions (and a telephone whose call-pickup button is broken), underfloor heating (on winter Mondays especially, the office must be warmed after freezing over the weekend)…

New Address

A fact worth remembering in advance, for both existing and potential clients: from May 2022, Workroom’s address will be “12-17, Jahamun-ro 17-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul.” This neatly combines “1F, 13, Jahamun-ro 10-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul,” used since 2006, and “2F, 4, Jahamun-ro 16-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul,” used since 2015(?), into one. Like the official commission email address, workroom@wkrm.kr, this address is unlikely to change much in the future. Sulki & Min, The Book Society, and Yangjangjeom will also share it.

Domains

Workroom runs two websites—Workroom and Workroom Press—and uses three associated domains. One is the official workroom.kr (registered April 16, 2007); another is wkrm.kr for email (registered April 13, 2007; visiting it redirects to the official domain); and the last is workroompress.kr for Workroom Press (registered July 11, 2012). Once, Min Guhong expressed regret that this domain system was uncharacteristically inconsistent and cluttered for Workroom, saying there would have been other options had he participated in choosing it. This overlaps with the thoughts on capitals expressed in Why We Write Everything in Small Letters by Herbert Bayer, the American graphic designer who studied at the Bauhaus: “I persuaded Walter Gropius, then the director, to use only lowercase at least at the Bauhaus. Gropius agreed. […] We write everything in lowercase to save time. Why do we need two alphabets for the same content?” Moreover, using two domains for one website incurs recurring maintenance costs, however small. Since a domain also serves as a website’s title, workroompress.kr is a little long to type. He proposed two approaches. (1) Make the email domain wkrm.kr the official domain instead of workroom.kr, and use prss.wkrm.kr for Workroom Press instead of workroompress.kr, shortening “press” as “workroom” is shortened to “wkrm.” The resulting system would be consistent, simple, and clear, and would itself reveal the relationship between Workroom and Workroom Press: a publisher run by a studio. (2) Use the official workroom.kr for email instead of wkrm.kr, and give Workroom Press the appropriate top-level domain (TLD), workroom.press. But even if his suggestions were followed literally, changing domains used for some fifteen years would be a waste of energy. Who, after all, would stick correction labels over the domains printed on copyright pages? These proposals can therefore really be realized only in a parallel universe or the metaverse.