Award at DSUS
Mobile design system guide
to Korean large-typhography
Lim Leesol
Hwang minyoung
Ha eunji
- User research
- Survey
- Writing
- Website
- Exhibition
- Figma
- Adobe InDesign
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Illustrator
Sep - Dec 2024
(3 months)
02. Nov.2024
Research presented and awarded at the Design Conference.
09. Dec.2024
Exhibited in the University graduation show
Guideline Website (built with Cargo)
Research paper(first autor)
2025 Graduation Show
Overview
The Large Typography Guide is part of my effort to create a new kind of user experience.
By conducting user research, I extracted the visual principles of large-typography, balancing aesthetics, legibility, and readability. I tested mobile components using large text and gathered feedback on usability and user preferences. These insights became the foundation of a large text design guideline.
The research was published as a paper and a book, and the outcome was built as a website. The paper received an award at the 2024 Fall Conference of the Korean Society of Design Science.
Background
Why do we continue to design for mobile using small-typography?
We often justify it with screen economy, legibility, or even aesthetics—but are we simply following convention out of habit?
We’ve grown used to the convention of small-typography, rarely questioning whether it still serves users best.
In Korea, some mobile services have experimented with larger type, but primarily for accessibility—targeting users with impaired vision or older adults. In such cases, large-typography is treated as a functional thing, rarely considered for its visual potential.
This project began with a set of fundamental questions:
- Why does visual aesthetics matter in design?
- Must we rely solely on sans-serif fonts (called min-buri in Korean) in digital design?
- Is large-typography only relevant in the context of accessibility?
- Is large-typography truly inconvenient to use?
These questions challenge the standard assumptions behind mobile typography.
Through this project, I explored large-typography not as a limitation—but as a powerful, aesthetic design choice.
Problem
- Lack of aesthetic evaluation for large-typography in mobile UI Design
-
Incompatibility of current design systems—which are optimised for small-typography—with large-typogaphy interfaces
Goals
-
To create a typography guideline that makes large-typography both functional and visually beautiful
- To build a mobile UI system that supports large-typography
without compromising aesthetics
Research
- To define the minimum standards for aesthetic and usable large-type design. I produced 7,200 mobile screen variations—3,150 using serif fonts and 4,050 using sans-serif fonts. These were printed at scale and evaluated by 20 junior designers for aesthetics, legibility, and readability.
- Based on the highest-rated combinations, I created a second test set: 30 card and list layout screens, then conducted an online survey with 132 general users to evaluate usability and preference.
Research Case
And I found 3 key principles for large-typography.
To inform the guideline, I explored the minimum conditions for aesthetically pleasing and usable large-typography interfaces.
We designed 28 screen variations reflecting potential component issues, grounded in the three key principles of large-typography.
An online survey gathered feedback on user preference and usability from 132 participants.
Result
The final guideline is available in both book and web formats.
👉 Visit the website (optimized for web and mobile).
The project’s research was also recognized in academia. A part of it was presented as a paper at the 2024 Fall University Korea Sosiety of Design Science, where it was selected as an award-winning submission.
I was the first author.
📄 View the paper here : The Potential of Serif Fonts in Korean for Mobile Visual Environments
Moment
Pink is me