The goal of the HANYUL Design Project was not to simply dress up HANYUL with imitations of traditional Korean designs, but to recreate it as a cosmetic brand born from a modern interpretation of traditional Korean medicine.
Concept
The containers of HANYUL’s products were inspired by traditional Yakho jars, which were used in Korean households to store medicinal herbs or natural ingredients. The soft curves and palm-fitting shape of the container reflect the gentle, warm care of traditional Minbang. The unique dual-face design—with Hangul on one side and English on the other—creates a neat and minimal impression. Another unique charm of HANYUL lies in the packaging: when the boxes are laid side by side, the horizontal flow of lines and colors becomes visible. Unlike the West, where verticality is emphasized, Korea and other Eastern cultures value broad, horizontal elements. The aesthetics of traditional Minbang, reinterpreted in a modern form, can only be experienced with HANYUL.
HANYUL is a Minbang cosmetic brand. Minbang refers to the wisdom of Korean mothers, passed down through generations — a living part of Korean culture. To express the balanced beauty found in Korean natural ingredients and the heritage of maternal wisdom, HANYUL has redefined its design with a contemporary sensibility that is free from convention, ageless, and global. Look forward to branding that is uniquely Korean, distinctly modern, and globally resonant — only from HANYUL.
HANYUL aims to express the traditional wisdom of Minbang and Korean aesthetics through its design. The HANYUL logo reflects the vertical and horizontal structure unique to Hangul. Its modern design has also been applied to the English logo, helping to share the beauty of Korean typography with the world.
HANYUL’s brand colors, ‘HANYUL Dark Brown’ and ‘HANYUL Gray,’ reflect the brand’s core values. HANYUL Dark Brown conveys the wisdom of Korean mothers who used natural ingredients as medicine, while the warm and modern ‘HANYUL Gray’ represents contemporary Korea. HANYUL’s color palette, inspired by the natural colors of ingredients at their healthiest and the landscapes where they are grown, is used across packaging and communication elements to intuitively convey the brand’s story.
In addition to the moments when people actually touch and use our products, they feel and experience the HANYUL brand in various ways. One of the key roles of HANYUL design is to create the necessary touchpoints and make each of them distinctly HANYUL so that people can experience the brand fully. HANYUL captured on camera the process of preparing facial cosmetic products using ingredients honestly and transparently formulated from raw materials carefully cultivated in Korea’s most fertile lands. Each scene in this process embodies what is most Korean and most HANYUL. Communicating the stories of our research labs, farms, ingredients, formulations, products, and design in a transparent way is a core value unique to HANYUL.
