Background: Study on typography has focused mainly on material(type etc), background(history and character etc), and special effects(expression, media, etc) etc. Although typography means how to use the types, the study has focused on external things excluding the principle. That may be because the principle is based on the vacant space with no coordinates given and thus the value judgment is too subjective and difficult while the material, background and special effects etc have clear shape, fact/relationship and usage and thus the logical proving is easy. Actually, most of the typography theories explain in detail about the material, usage, background, and special effects etc but they explain the principle in only abstract and conceptual way and only show the practice examples and existing work pieces. To answer to this situation, the researcher intends to analyze the characteristic of the meaning, form and content of typography to propose detailed principle for the typographical practice and learning.
Methods: The researcher proposes the concept of part and whole as the core principle of typography. He investigates the general and philosophical concept of part and whole and searches for concurrences between the meaning, form and content of typography and concept of part and whole. He comprehends the characteristic of the concept of part and whole deducted from typography and converses it into a viewpoint and proposes the disassemble and assemble as the practical operational principle of this viewpoint.
Results : The core concept of typography is part and whole. Meaning(terminology, unit and space), form(letter and text) and content(grammar and flow) of typography are all composed of part and whole relationship. The term typography itself and all the typographical elements like unit, space, type, character, grammar of text and flow of content etc are all relationship of part and whole. Part and whole has characteristic of structure(frame, connection), system(order, rule) and recursion(part=whole, circulation). If you substitute these into typography, character and text has characteristic of connection of frames, order according to the rules and circulation of part and whole. These characteristics work as the viewpoint of the following principle.
The specific principle by viewpoint of part and whole is. disassemble and assemble. Disassemble works in the order of ① disconnection → ② search for frames → ③ comprehension of order → ④ and discovery of rule. Assemble works in the order of ① establishment of rule → ② creation of order → ③ formation of frames → ④ and connection. Disassembly and assembly circulate reversely and in order.
Conclusion : Borges" novel 〈The Library of Babel〉 describes limitless books composed by a dozen of alphabets. This composition is the typography and its main principle is the disassembly and assembly by the viewpoint of the part and whole.