Incheon, 1952.

Hanwha is a group whose name is a shortening of its first one. Wikipedia says Kim Chong-hee founded Korea Explosives Co., in Korean 한국화약 (Hanguk Hwayak), in October 1952. Before that, Wikipedia says, he had worked as a gunpowder engineer at a Japanese-owned explosives factory, and he later won the bid for that company and its factory in Incheon, where he started the business. The Korea JoongAng Daily, in a report on the group published on 1 August 2021, said Hanwha started as an explosives manufacturer in the early 1950s.

The company’s own history puts the early decades in plain terms. Hanwha says that from 1952 to 1963, a period it titles Foundation of a Business, Korea Explosives produced industrial explosives for construction work and began making dynamite in Korea. Wikipedia says the company moved into other businesses from the mid-1960s, founding the company that became Hanwha Solutions and entering the petrochemical market. Wikipedia says the group bought Shinhan Bearing Industrial, founded Kyung-in Energy in 1969 and founded Hankook Precision Tools in 1971.

The second chairman widened the group further. The Korea JoongAng Daily said in 2021 that Kim Seung-youn took the helm of the group in 1981, and that he celebrated the fortieth anniversary of his inauguration on 1 August 2021. The paper said that in 1982 the group acquired Hanyang Chemical and Dow Chemical Korea, which were later folded into Hanwha Solutions’ chemical division. It said the group bought Junga Group and Hanyang Stores, which became Hanwha Hotels & Resorts and Hanwha Galleria; Hanwha dates the Junga purchase to 1985 and the Hanyang Stores purchase to 1986.

The name changed while the group was spreading into those new fields. Hanwha’s list of milestones says that in 1992 it renamed the Korea Explosives Group as the Hanwha Group. Wikipedia says that in 1992 the company adopted its abbreviation as its new name, and that in the same year Binggrae, the dairy and ice-cream maker, was separated from the group and made independent. The new name kept two syllables of the old one, Han from Hanguk and hwa from Hwayak, and dropped the word for explosives from the group’s name.

Three circles in a range of colours.

Hanwha’s present symbol is built from circles. On its English website, Hanwha says its symbol is a combination of three dynamic circles in a range of colours. It calls the symbol the Tricircle, says it is an integral part of the group’s corporate branding, and says it stands for a commitment to continuous innovation that allows limitless expansion. In the group’s list of milestones, Hanwha says it announced the Tricircle as its new CI, or corporate identity, in 2007, the year it also held a Hanwha Global Strategy Conference.

The Tricircle arrived as the group was renaming businesses abroad as well as at home. Hanwha’s milestones place 2007 at the start of a period titled Accelerating Global Business, and list Hanwha Life subsidiaries in Vietnam from that period. Hanwha says Korea Life Insurance, acquired in 2002, was renamed Hanwha Life, and that the German solar company Q.CELLS was acquired and later became part of Hanwha Solutions, with Hanwha Solar Energy renamed Hanwha Qcells in 2013.

Hanwha also writes its identity in words. On the same website, the group lists three brand values: Sustainable and Inclusive Growth, Technology and Solution-driven Innovation and Enhancing Lives. Hanwha says the first stands for social, economic and environmental prosperity, the second for providing solutions through technological innovation, and the third for laying the foundation for a fulfilling life through its technologies, products and services. Those three values sit beside the three circles on the group’s brand page.

The group keeps a record of its own story. Hanwha says it opened the Hanwha Historical Museum in 2009, two years after the Tricircle was announced. In 2014, Hanwha says, it agreed to acquire four Samsung companies, among them Samsung Techwin, which later became Hanwha Vision; the Korea JoongAng Daily dated that acquisition to 2015.

An explosives maker, a short name and three circles.

Korean corporate identities often carry their history inside their names. Group names can grow out of older company names, shortened over decades until the original words survive only as initials or a contraction. Other identities are built around English-letter abbreviations, which read the same at home and abroad, and which leave room for a holding company to sit above businesses as different as energy, chemicals and telecoms. Founders’ names and place names also turn up, sometimes in the original form and sometimes reduced to a single syllable.

Digital companies add a further layer. For an internet platform or a mobile app, the first point of contact is often not a logo on a building but an app icon on a phone screen: a small square that has to hold a colour, a shape and sometimes a single letter at very small sizes. Many consumer-facing companies also use character mascots as brand surfaces in their own right, appearing in messaging stickers, merchandise, retail stores and advertising, so that a cartoon figure can be as recognisable as the corporate name. A design reading of these companies looks at three layers together: the name, the mark, and the characters and icons that carry them into daily use.

An eagle and a shipyard.

The Hanwha name also belongs to a baseball club. Hanwha says that in 1986 it established the Binggrae Eagles, the club that is now the Hanwha Eagles. Wikipedia says the Eagles are a professional baseball team based in Daejeon that plays in the KBO League, and that its home ground is Daejeon Hanwha Life Ballpark, which carries the name of the group’s life insurer. The club took the name of Binggrae, then part of the group, before the group name itself had changed, and later took the name Hanwha.

The name has also gone up on a shipyard. The Korea Herald, in a report by Song Seung-hyun on 23 May 2023, said Hanwha Group, the new owner of Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, rebranded the shipbuilder as Hanwha Ocean at a shareholders’ meeting in Geoje, in South Gyeongsang Province. The paper published a photograph of the Daewoo logo being removed from the shipyard before the relaunch, and an image of the new Hanwha Ocean corporate logo. It said this was the second change of name in the shipbuilder’s history, after one in 1978, and that Kwon Hyuk-woong was named the first chief executive of the renamed company.

The Korea JoongAng Daily also reported in 2021 that the group had set up an aerospace task force called Space Hub early that year, headed by Kim Dong-kwan, the chairman’s eldest son. Hanwha lists Space Hub among its milestones.

For a design guide, Hanwha shows how a group can cut its founding name, Korea Explosives, down to two syllables and then set that short name beside three coloured circles on businesses as different as a ballpark, a shipyard and an insurer. Compare Binggrae, the dairy maker that left the group in 1992, and SK Group, another Korean group whose name is a shortening of its first one. For this guide we use circle orange, amber and flame with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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