To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Yea-Hyang, a Korean traditional ensemble at Hyang-Lin Church, they commissioned me to design an eco bag to carry scores and miscellaneous items. They had specific type of the bag in mind, so my job was to design its monotone printing.

The first two iterations are based on Chinese letters that stand for Yea-Hyang. They placed great meanings when naming themselves, for Yea(藝) means artistic skills and Hyang(香) means pleasant scent(this letter is also used in the name of the church, Hyang-Lin). As members did not want extravagant design, these are meant to be simple.

The third design is constituted of simplified shapes of instruments in the ensemble, which are shown below. The design reflects Yea-Hyang’s effort in translating western cords into the notes that can be played in Korean instruments, which is often more limited than that of the piano or organ. This idea of constant communication between Western and Eastern cords will be shown when they hold this eco bag along with traditional instruments.

The fourth is with Korean letters, which merges the idea of the first three: modernizing the shape of Korean letters for simple design while infusing shapes of instruments. Consonants of the letters resemble the shape of repeat notation on music scores, which is the most frequent mark that Yea-Hyang use when accompanying gospel songs for the church.