ABOUT ME
SUMMARY: I DO LOGO DESIGNS, DIGITAL ALBUM ART DESIGNS, MERCH DESIGNS, AND COMPANY BROCHURES. The rest is just a story about how I started doing these.
I was born and raised in Yoido, one of the most significant areas of South Korea. It’s an island surrounded by Korea’s most famous river. I believe there was a special vibe in our city that made my generation flourish in art. Some of my friends are famous musicians.
I thought I was good at music, so I grew up wanting to become a professional musician. Yet I never had balls to commit or go against my parents’ expectations.
Apparently I wasn’t allowed to quit school to play music full-time. I started to study visual arts and comics instead. My high school had a great art teacher. She helped me prepare a design portfolio within a very short period of time. This too was not what my family expected from me. So I gave up on that as well. I ended up going to a liberal arts college with a pretty useless degree. Graduated without any practical skills or meaningful job experiences.
After giving up on so many dreams to become normalized, I wasn’t quite myself. Depression and panic attacks kicked in more often over time. I needed an outlet.
So I started playing music in various bands since 2008, mostly in hardcore genres. It’s a great way to relieve stress and express your creative self. It’s also a great way to stay broke especially if you happen to live in a country with little or no markets for loud music, like South Korea. All I had was a very small amount of local fame which unfortunately gave me a rock star attitude way too early on my career. On my resume, I wrote down how famous I was in the rock scene and this landed me 0 interview opportunities for a year. Luckily, someone thought this was funny enough to hire me (THANK YOU SARA). I finally had a day job as an intern after one full year of job hunting. Eventually they offered me a full time position and this helped me finance my band activities.
Playing in bands hooked me up with some design gigs because our community was very DIY-oriented. I was just starting out, but that was good enough for my friends. As my free works started to take up more time, I began charging small fees. Even more work came in. I decided to quit my day job at the international corporate to become a full time freelancer.
Then my beginner’s luck ran out. Had 0 work for weeks. Maybe because I got too cocky. Maybe because I never improved. Maybe because I had a shitty attitude against my clients’ feedback (but sometimes these little comments are quite devastating—I will talk more in depth about this in a separate blog post).
That’s when I started my own businesses. I launched two clothing brands which I had no idea how to run. I still have some stocks left over. Only saved a small portion of them from flooding leaks that damaged most of my goods when I opened an offline store that shut down promptly after its opening.
Now I have years of experience with failing at pretty much everything. This is a good thing though. Tough lessons made me humble. Also, I recently fell in love with someone. I want to marry her. Work feels a little different once you start doing it not for yourself, but for someone important to you.
So I do designs, to capitalize my talent to feed my lady good meals forever. Failures tamed me to become way more compliant with demands. Perhaps this is why I started to get more inquiries these days, on top of my own bands’ merch designs that sell out faster than ever.