Notes from 2026 Recording what I’ve experienced and thoughtNotes / 2026
May1. My industrial design background has been incredibly valuable. It has given me a strong mindset for focusing on functionality, considering the context of use. It has also given me a love for design history and a way of seeing that interprets today's design within the context of its time and creates what comes next without losing its essence.
1-1. Designing hardware requires strong integrated thinking. Software can evolve with its users through updates and personalization, but hardware must anticipate every user and context upfront. It makes integrated decisions the designer's full responsibility.
1-2. I learned art and design history from a spatial design professor, as my undergrad industrial design had three tracks — UX design, product design, and spatial design. Spatial design is a great medium for storytelling, and he loved storie and philosophical concepts as well. Through historical examples, I learned how conceptual design can create experiences by giving narratives to design.
2. Trust lasts forever. One wrong decision can break the relationship forever. Be lighthearted, but never irresponsible.
3. The majority is not always right.
4. I personally love the words designer, problem, and vision. The word ‘Designer’ simply sounds beautiful to me. The word ‘Problem’ feels thoughtful and professional, like working on something important for the world. And the word ‘Vision’ reminds me of people with dreams and bright, beautiful directions. Just love those words.
January 1. One of my dreams is to bring every idea in my head into the world before I die. I want to give everything I have, contribute as much as I can, and face death with no regrets, knowing that not even a single idea was left inside me.
1-1. More honestly, it is not really about contribution, but about my need to empty myself. My head and mind are always filled with thoughts. I feel an intense sense of pleasure when those thoughts are carefully organized and expressed through design.
Revisited, May 2026. Another dream is to love design forever, with my depth of thinking continuing to deepen as I age.
2. In the film Decision to Leave, I resonated with the scene in which the main character, Haejun, uses artificial tears to see his subject more clearly. This scene reminded me of myself attempting to approach an invisible truth. I may have resonated with the sense of hidden loneliness in this process, because it involves choosing solitude in order to communicate directly with the subject itself.
3. I chose Monet’s Water Lilies as the favicon for this website. Because the subject holds a meaning for me that feels closely aligned with this space. Monet repeatedly returned to his pond to paint the water lilies as a way to explore time, light, and perception. In a similar way, this website is a place I return to again and again to write, to reflect, and to explore myself, and design, the essence of things in the world.
Also, in this painting, the ambiguous color—somewhere between blue and green—is compelling to me. It reminds me of the blue-green tone in the film Decision to Leave, which represents the ambiguity of the world. Haejun repeatedly applies artificial tears to his eyes in order to approach the truth. Bringing these ideas together, I wanted to express my attempt to unravel my own ambiguity through continuous writing.
3-1. I revise my past writings repeatedly, not to polish them but to search for words that capture the truth more clearly.