A bojagi is a traditional Korean wrapping cloth.

There is currently interest in re-using traditional and cultural designs in modern commercial applications. The bojagi is one of these traditional designs that could be reinvented and hence reinvigorated. But how can a designer create bojagi patterns for use in new digital design?

Working with Meong Jin Shin I developed a software tool that can create a wide range of different bojagi. We identified 8 different classes of traditional bojagi as shown below:

We then created a software tool that would allow a user to create new bojagi which would have the same visual characteristics as one of these 8 traditional classes.

We had some designers in Korea evaluate the tool and they were quite impressed. Although in this study we worked with Bojagi, in fact we were interested in exploring the general method of using digital tools such as this one to allow users to explore traditional designs and to use them in their contemporary design work. The ideas could be easily extended to cover other traditional designs such as tartan. The software could also be added to a package such as Adobe Photoshop as a plug-in.

You can read the full paper that we published here.

Shin MJ & Westland S, 2017. Digitizing traditional cultural designs, The Design Journal, 20 (5), 639-658.