09/19/2026
The Door That Opens From Both Sides.
In 2017, BTS became the first Korean act to win a Billboard Music Award and was named by TIME among the 25 most influential people on the internet. That same year, Korean designer Shin Myungsup and his team at PlusX were brought in to rebuild the group's identity. The name was the first problem: Bangtan Sonyeondan, "Bulletproof Boy Scouts," had been built around defending teenagers from prejudice, and the Korean wordmark read as something else entirely abroad.
Working from producer and member interviews, PlusX redefined the acronym as Beyond The Scene: youth that refuses to settle, stumbling and rising toward something further ahead. The symbol came directly from that sentence. Two angled planes open outward, a door caught mid-swing, with light breaking through the gap.
The clever part is the second mark. ARMY, the group's fandom, was given the same door drawn from the opposite side, seen by those waiting to welcome them through. Placed together, the two symbols close into a single opening. From there the studio proposed carrying the act of opening into every touchpoint: packaging that unfolds like a door, and a concert opening in which an enormous door parts and the members walk out of it.
Recognised at the iF Design Award, the German Design Award, A' Design Award and the IDEA Award, the identity found its real proof elsewhere. Fans began drawing their own versions of the mark, extending a system built to survive constantly changing album concepts.
One door, drawn twice. A symbol that completes only when someone is standing on the other side.
