Eulmin Park

For Eulmin Park, the play of everyday language is a constant source of fascination. Books and memes, psychology and neuroscience – they all feed her interest in how words shape our lives and interactions. “Understanding the language we use is the basis for how I understand personality and character,” she explains. It’s also the basis of her creative work. Across graphic design and bookmaking, Eulmin intertwines verbal and visual languages to convey and create meaning. Below, we learn more about how she works with print and pixels, what sparked her interest in this area and how she got her start in the design world.

About my work

My creative practice
I love thinking and making things. As a brand designer, I work on brand identities, campaigns and visual systems – delivering stories and ideas that move from one person to the next. I’m also a type enthusiast: I love typesetting books. You can find me going crazy on InDesign every now and then.

Influences and inspiration
Growing up bilingual, I was always thinking in more than one language. I learned that translation happens between cultures, and also between words and visuals. A layered, back-and-forth thinking is at the core of how I work.

I’m always curious about language systems – verbal, non-verbal and visual – and the changing ways in which we exchange tone, humor and emotions with one another. This kind of emotional complexity is seen in books, memes, and online culture, and I turn to these spaces when shaping depth in my work. Language is the basis for how I understand personality and character. Practicing multiple languages and studying the nuances of how we apply them shapes the layers I add to my designs.

My training
As someone who works on print and digital projects all the time, I’d say you need a solid understanding of typography, layouts, dimension and space; knowledge of these four is really the heart of what we do as graphic designers.

It’s also important to train your eye to see the smaller details (like kerning!), but ideally in a way that still helps you cultivate appreciation for the craft. I personally gained a deeper love of type while refining my skills in bookmaking and printmaking. Having access to the letterpress and printmaking labs during my time in school was such a privilege. I was there fine-tuning metal type and fussing over the smallest pixels, and I enjoyed every second of it.

Favourite recent project
My BFA thesis, also known as my brainchild. It’s called “48:00:00: A Day in Progress” and it involved the most experimentation and thinking I’ve ever done for a visual project. The core idea is that, in a productive world, we often feel chased by the clock to perform something ”productive” 24/7. So I created the concept of a 48-hour day and imagined what it’d be like to investigate our emotions, thoughts and behaviors throughout the day instead.

Using this idea, I created a virtual experience, an ephemeral installation piece, animated campaign materials and various printed matter for my project. The entire process felt so surreal and I’m very happy that I got to share it with an audience.

A normal day usually looks like…
My day-to-day differs, but my week usually has a bit of a pattern. An active Slack status and hourly Figma time stamps. Exports. The Drive. Hilarious conversations. And good food.

A starter pack for my job would be:
A really good playlist rotation.

How I got here

Starting my creative journey
I landed my first design-related internship after I completed my third year in college and subsequently took on freelance projects creating layouts for print and web. Then came my senior exhibition, where I got to know many people in my department and industry. Now, I’m working full-time with incredible people! It’s been a journey for sure and I’m so grateful.

Landing my first few jobs, clients and commissions
I attended the annual career internship fairs at my college; seeing the types of opportunities available to students helped familiarize me with the industry and introduced me to the job-searching process. It was during these fairs that I practiced different styles of interviews and landed my first internship.

That first leap involved active research and reaching out to affiliated people; the next few opportunities came to me via recommendations. The approach I took was to be transparent about what I was looking for and make my strengths prominent.

Biggest challenge along the way
Promoting my work. When you’re starting out, not only are you still learning design, but you’re also learning how to curate your work for the people viewing it. There's no real formula for this – the challenge never stops.

Skills I've found helpful for my creative work
Looking backwards. When I get stuck on an idea, it always helps to look backwards and revisit ideas from a few weeks ago. Keeping files in chronological order makes a lot of sense for this, though it can get complicated trying to sort them out sometimes. As a designer, a genuinely helpful skill is using a conventional naming system for all your iterations.

My social media and self-promotion vibe is…
Using social media as a designer has always felt important to me because it allows me to connect my personal interests, work and life together in one space. This space opens a lot of doors to meet other people who are doing amazing things.

When it comes to promoting my work, I like to post some behind-the-scenes photos alongside my final product. I also personally love seeing a mix of both design and non-design related things on people’s accounts. It shows that you’re a human.

Three things I’ve found useful in my career:
Being chronically online, being offline and being open to trying new things. I think the more exposed you are to new ways of living, the more creative practices you adopt – and the more creative you eventually become.

My greatest learnings when it comes to making money and supporting myself as a creative have been…
Making money and figuring out all the logistics as a creative worker is such an enigma. I’m not sure I’ll ever find the “perfect” system, but I think that you have to set realistic standards and avoid putting creative work on a pedestal.

Advice

Best career-related advice I've ever received
One of my former instructors once said, “Don’t wait. If you have something you want to do, don’t include it in your 10-year plan. Start talking about it now! Go for it now!” He was the perfect embodiment of his own advice too. I still think about his words to this day.

Where I go to feel connected as a creative
I have two favorite places. The first one is actually social media. I find that a lot of interesting ideas come from places of public discourse, so I head over to social platforms to see what people are talking about and sharing visuals of. A lot of creative people I follow don’t identify as creatives.

The second place would be local book fairs. They take place annually in LA, and I love seeing what independent publishers and book artists are up to.

What I'd say to someone looking to get into a similar role
Take things one step at a time. Starting out as a junior designer can feel daunting because there are a lot of skills required of you, but try not to overwhelm yourself with a large to-do list of things to study, places to visit or people to reach out to. Homework is stressful. Instead, engage with real-life products and campaigns – enjoy them, differentiate between interesting versus effective design, then come home to build self-initiated projects. Take the time to really pinpoint what makes you want to engage with something. Being observant and honest is more than half the game. Be you.