Abstract: Chinese calligraphy is viewed as the key to a more in-depth understanding of the Chinese cultural code; therefore, the goal of this research consists in determination of cultural meanings underlying the spatial structure and visual image of hieroglyph. In the course of this study, the authors advance the idea of the national Sinologist V. V. Malyavin, which implies that artistic realm of the works of Chinese calligraphy represents a “median” space for interaction of the two diverging planes of existence – revealed and concealed (“earlier Heavenly” and “later Heaven”). The study applies the culturological method for interpretation of artistic space of hieroglyph within the context of the traditional for Chinese culture spatial models. The formation of “median” space though the description of hieroglyph testifies to the competence of a calligraphist to find balance in the “flow of changes”. Hieroglyph represents a visual metaphor of the moving human body that is in the state of inner peace (which is reflected in the precision of internal connections of the symbol, its relation to the physical center, and sense of the “firmness” of emptiness.

Abstract: Designing the visual interaction of a letter and a hieroglyph in a multicultural field of graphic design is a very topical issue. The problem is that in practice graphic solutions often turn out to be a vulgar stylization, since the figures of a letter and a hieroglyph are associated with fundamentally different cultures of writing. To solve the problem of stylizing a letter to a hieroglyph, the author of the article proposes to analyze the experience of Korea that uses a unique syllable alphabet that looks like hieroglyphs, and therefore is a bridge between letter and hieroglyphic writing. Accordingly, the object of the study is Korean calligraphy, and the subject is the visual adaptation of the Korean alphabet letter to hieroglyphs. The author of the article relies on Korean and Japanese sources, among which it is worth highlighting the collection of scientific reports at the international symposium in Niigata (Japan, 2015), devoted to the problems of aesthetics of calligraphy of China, Korea and Japan. As a result of the study, the author identifies three historically established ways of visual adaptation of Hangul to hieroglyphs (actual and for letter) which are not reduced to stylization since they express the Korean idea of beauty itself. Since the hieroglyphic letter is not rooted in the national tradition, the author considers the search for the identity of calligraphy with a brush as the most important task of the designer allowing to significantly improve the quality of stylizing the letter under the hieroglyph.