Words By Bangtan (2024)

Somewhere between 2021-2022 I ran across a monthly challenge within the fandom for Korean group, BTS. As with so many challenges, I would see the posts for the month’s event when it was finished, and forget to keep an eye out for the following month’s theme. “Oh, I should try and do something for that!” Famous last words.

What is Words By Bangtan?

According to the fan account’s carrd from 2021;

Launching a new monthly ARMY event to celebrate the lyricism and words of BTS called #WordsByBangtan! This commences on the 25th of each month, starting February 2021, 12 pm KST. BTS' lyrics have been an instrumental part of their artistry and propensity to build a connection with the fans.

This is an opportunity to showcase our personal connections to their words through a variety of different mediums - lyric analysis threads, sharing our favourite words by them, edits, visualizations, collages, blogs, dance choreographies, films and many many more - if their words ever inspired you to create something or moved you, this is an event for you.

We will also have monthly themes to make it more engaging. It is up to you whether you want to stick to these themes, as they're only created to provide guidance. The only instructions are to credit translations you utilize, use the hashtag, and most importantly - have fun!

words by bangtan, introduction carrd

At the start of 2024, as I was finishing up the final projects for Lettering Sketchbook* and working through Typism’s Lettering Summit, I set out to make a concerted effort to keep a close eye on the Words By Bangtan challenge. When the themes dropped, when the submissions were due. Because without the lettering course to keep me on my toes, how was I going to put these skills to practice? The challenge gave me an opportunity to pursue an interest in the music and lyrical content, while also putting skills gleamed from both the Lettering Sketchbook course and Typism Summit lectures to practical use.

Challenge Accepted (Method)

As is probably expected by this point in the blog posts – project worth doing, project worth overdoing.

Research: From the get-go in January sketchbooks were filled with notes, pages of lyrics that could apply to the monthly theme (From memory, the majority of Korean-language translations came from doolset, where I could I would translate the Japanese lyrics to the best of my abilities). After all, it’s easier to narrow down options from a short list.

2. Sketches: After narrowing it down to a top 3 or 4 and using it as an exercise to try and do several sketches for each, I would move onto a final composition in another A5 midori dot-grid notebook.

3.Digitally Finishing: Once the final sketch/es were completed, a photo was taken with the ipad, dropping it into a fresh procreate file to finalise composition, colours and add embelishments.

The themes that I participated in from first to last included:

January: Revolution
February: Connection
March: Objection (missed)
April: Passion
May: Deconstruct
June: Reunion
July: Restoration
August: Inception
September: Protection

Overall this was a fun way to launch from Lettering Sketchbook and Typism Summit into continuing to give my lettering work a cause and a reason for practice, as well as diving deeper into the lyrical content of Bangtan Sonyeondan’s rather vast discography.

Words By Bangtan (2024)

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