- Shelly Peleg
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
Website Link
Tell us a bit about yourself, your role, and how you found your way to a creative career
I’m Joie Minsoo Kim, a storytelling graphic designer based in London. I started with Visual Communication, which gave me a lot of freedom to experiment with various media.
My interest has never been limited to a specific aspect in the realms of visual design, but rather a blend of multiple things like film, typography, web, print, and so much more. These interests shifted with time, but the core of it was always storytelling. The intriguing visuals meant nothing to me unless they had a story to tell.
This interest, rooted in storytelling, grew into the study of fictional aspects of our lives. How we as humans consume stories sprinkled with fiction to make sense of the world we live in. So, as a graphic designer, I create visuals to suggest a narrative of the world I see.
When did you work on your online portfolio, how long did it take
My portfolio website has existed since 2019, but this particular design was built roughly around two years ago. I usually take time to design the final outcome with other projects, but with this design, I just started with only the personal branding elements. I have been tweaking the website from time to time, but I think it took me about two to three weeks to finally publish it.
Was there a main inspiration - visual or thematic - that guided you in the process of your portfolio design? Please elaborate
As you can see on my website, most of the projects there are my personal projects. As funny as it sounds, I considered my website a tiny universe I shoved into a drawer. I wanted it to feel intimate and delicate, like aged pages of a novel. It has celestial animations and masked video working as a window to peek inside.
The website as a whole works as the viewer rummaging through a file cabinet. It has various tags to navigate between projects and little footnotes to explain each visual element within. There are bits and pieces that explain about me, and it is more personal than professional. The ironic mix of practicality and amusement on my website is telling of who I am.
I’ve mentioned how I had no concrete visuals for the final outcome before I started. This website is built on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code. So most of the time when I was building this website, I was staring at the black screen filled with code. The process of building this website was far from graphic design. However, I do think that this specific process allowed me to fully understand what goes on in my head.
Share a few words about how you approached the idea of personal branding when creating your portfolio
There’s this old Korean folktale about a young brother and sister who were being chased by a tiger. The sky let down a rope to save the children, and they became the sun and the moon. The younger sister feared the dark, so the brother turned into the moon so the sister could be the sun.
I grew up with these stories that explain how the world works. These stories exist in all cultures, sometimes in the name of myth and religion. I incorporated this specific story into my logo design. The motif of the sun and the moon is the representation of the storytelling I pursue through design. The familiarity and the security of a bedtime story were what I wanted people to see in my personal brand.
Share any tech details, special tools or web-design features you included, or any behind-the-scenes information
The original website was fully coded, but I changed it at the last minute to a WordPress website for convenience. However, many CSS and JavaScript codes make this website what it is. Personally, I love the planetary animations on the landing page. Little animation that isn’t so distracting, but still maintains a movement to make the website feel alive. The outline animation of the project category also adds to that sense of motion.
Walk us through the design process of the project page
For the project pages, I made the decision to split the screen into two sections. Each section for texts and images. The description text has a footnote that connects to the corresponding images and short captions. This layout allows people to choose what to see and read at their own time. The website gives the information, but how to digest that information is different for each person. Some can start by viewing all the images first, or with text. Or some can jump between text and images. It is a digital platform, but the layout itself has that sense of choice you get from an analogue experience.
This layout does make the overall images on my website smaller. I don’t think of this as a downside. Instead of filling the screen with gigantic images, bite-sized images are less intimidating. I like the friendliness that small images offer in my project pages.
How did you curate the chosen projects for your portfolio
This website is mostly curated with my personal projects. The ones that don’t have a big platform to share with the public. The projects with the quiet voices.
These projects were mostly worked on between client works and had no proper audience. Despite that, these are the projects that I use to push the boundaries of my work. Some are not the most exciting projects to look at, but they are the ones that shape how I think and make.
What web-design project are you working on currently?
I am currently working on creating a modern version of a cabinet of curiosities in the digital realm. There’s a long way to go, but it’s part of the ongoing research of fictional tactile experience. What I’m pushing in my current projects is finding the balance between the digital and analogue. I cannot share much at this stage, but it will be an exciting challenge for me to tackle.
Thank you Joie!
