Designing with Structure and Simplicity

Ever since I first encountered Richard Feynman's work, I've been captivated by the idea that true understanding is the key to creation. Guided by his principle — "What I cannot create, I do not understand" — I approach each project by breaking a complex problem into its simplest parts, then rebuilding it into something that is both fundamentally sound and worth looking at.

At Advue Digital, that principle gets tested weekly. I design across more than ten client accounts spanning banking, asset management, food and beverage, and hospitality, which means moving between a regional bank's twenty-year growth story and a fried chicken chain's lunch promotion in the same afternoon. Each one arrives as raw material — a compliance document, a spreadsheet of branch locations, a price list — and has to leave as something a specific person can understand in the few seconds they'll actually give it.

My Design Philosophy

For me, design goes beyond aesthetics — it's about understanding the essence of a problem and crafting solutions that resonate on a human level. I start with why, then work through the how and the what, whether that means reading engagement data, learning the regulatory constraints a financial brochure has to satisfy, or sitting with the fact that a poster has to work on someone standing in a queue holding a phone.

Working bilingually across English and Korean sharpened this. When the same information has to land for two audiences with different reading habits and different expectations of a financial institution, you stop treating layout as decoration and start treating it as the argument itself.

I've also learned to stay agile. My method is consistent reflection, collaboration, and iteration — across client accounts, freelance engagements, and my own product work.