hello!
I am a Korean-American graphic designer currently based in San Diego, California.
my upbringing
I grew up in San Diego, California with a STEM-based family, yet art was the foundation of our relationship with one another.
We hand drew banners to welcome our dad home from business trips, painted birthday cards for our mom, tinkered coins out of tin foil, and crafted DIY Yu-gi-oh cards. My passion for documenting and decorating the world with a design eye sprouted from this union of both creative and logical thinking.
my interests
I like to play between the perspective of the consumer and the perspective of the artist. While I enjoy the process and labor in creating something like a photograph, drawing, meal, or Taekwondo performance, I also get excited observing and learning from other artists.
For example, my drive to design reboots after bingewatching a new competition show with my family. Whether it’s about baking, gardening, glassblowing, or fashion-designing, each field has its own unique process. I enjoy analyzing how Iron Chefs plate their appetizer dishes different from their entree or dessert dishes. It’s exciting to learn how florists take advantage of a small canvas limited to a single vase versus a large landscape of land. There’s something special about seeing reveals on Project Runway and how it stemmed from a single sketch. Watching these shows that document multiple artist’s concepts and executions as well as listening to the judges’ critiques allows me to see different processes I want to apply to my own practice.
my career
I hold a strong focus on design research, typography, and art direction with experience in exhibition curation, branding, and editorial publication. I am currently invested in applying my experience to the food, makeup, lifestyle, and music industries.
My personal projects are usually influenced by my cultural identity. I believe that modernized and meaningful design is building off referencing the historical and literal aspects of culture.