Alumni CEO Talk
LIFT- OFF Alumni Sejin Choi and Jinwoo Lee, Department of Visual communication Design
LIFT-OFF is a two-person graphic design duo whose sometimes intuitive and intense, sometimes metaphorical and descriptive graphic designs deliver lighthearted visual messages to the cultural community. What happens when two design-loving minds meet? We caught up with LIFT-OFF's art directors, Jinwoo Lee and Sejin Choi, to find out how long it took them to reach 200 per cent synergy.
You, the faint one, not easily seen
Art Directors Sejin Choi and Jinwoo Lee met as fellow students at Kookmin University's Department of Visual Design. Each remembers their first impressions of the other differently. Jinwoo recalls an anecdote about having lunch with Sejin Choi on the first day of class. To paraphrase Jinwoo, Choi's first impression of him was "faint". The 20-year-old art director is described as having a calm demeanour, like the characters drawn by manga artist Mitsuru Adachi. Sejin Choi remembers his first impression of Jinwoo Lee as a man burning a cigarette with a scowl on his face. In Choi's words, "He was sharp, his hair was short, and he wasn't someone to look at easily, and I felt that if I messed with him, I would be in trouble. At the age of twenty-one, Lee was slimmer than he is today, and it's believed that he had a timely sense of rebellion that was hard to conceal, much like that of Wong Kar-wai in Hong Kong films of the 90s.
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From left, art directors Sejin Choi and Jinwoo Lee
Design Studio LIFT-OFF
During their freshman year, they didn't interact much. There are reasons why Art Director Jinwoo didn't come to school much, but even if he did, it would have been difficult for them to get along because of their different personalities. It wasn't until he returned to school after his military service that they began to hang out together.
<Kareichi, Goryeo People by National Folk Museum (Top), Acoustics of the Station by Gyeonggi Sinawi Orchestra (Bottom)
"I went back to school and did well in school. The visual design department provided workshops for students, but me and Sejin were both 'Jeongneungs' who had enemies in Jeongneung, so we often stayed up all night at school. There were five of us, including me and Sejin, doing assignments and preparing exhibitions for graphic design and typography clubs, but because we had opposite design styles, we kept a certain distance even within the five of us." Art Director Jinwoo Lee adds, this time with Sejin Choi's input. "We were very different from the start, not only in design but also in our working styles, so when we were collaborating, we had a separate friend to connect us, so I couldn't imagine us working together after graduation."
Now that's a team!
Life is full of the unexpected. Art Director Sejin Choi joined Text, a design studio where Art Director Jinwoo Lee works. Art Director Jinwoo Lee says he was prepared.
"A friend who doesn't fit in with me has joined our company (laughs). I was surprised to see that she was willing to learn from me by asking me questions about my work. As an undergraduate student, both Sejin and I had very strong egos, so we often clashed, but thanks to our respective social lives - me at Text Design Studio and her at an architecture firm - we became more flexible in our thinking and behaviour, respecting each other's ways but avoiding anything that might hurt our feelings."
<Desert, Sea EL MAR LA MAR participated in the special exhibition 100 Films 100 Posters at the Jeonju International Film Festival (left),
<Laundry> National Contemporary Dance Company (right)
On the other hand, Choi Se-jin found something in Jin-woo that he didn't have while working with him.
"Text is a small design studio founded by Professor Jung Jin-yeol of the Department of Visual Design at Kookmin University. It's a small company with only one hundred members, so when I joined the company, Jin-woo and I both bought the team leader's business card. However, as a young person in my late 20s who had just started working in graphic design, I didn't have much social experience, so it was quite a burden to deal with clients who were older and more socially experienced than me. As an undergraduate, I only had to make sure that the outcome of the assignment looked good, but in practice, communication with clients is just as important as the design work. Jinwoo jokingly told me that it was easy for him to communicate with clients because he had the appearance of a team leader, but after he left the company, I had to communicate with clients in earnest, and I vaguely thought that we should open a design studio together."
A sniper and a rifleman at heart
Art Director Jinwoo Lee started his career as an independent designer when he founded LIFT-OFF, a one-man operation. He set up a design studio out of curiosity, but he wasn't satisfied. In addition to design-related tasks, he had to do taxes, accounting, and other tasks required to run a design studio, and he faced the harsh reality of being self-employed. There was also a crisis. The pandemic halted performances and exhibitions in the arts and culture community, and sales took a hit.
"I was shooting myself in the foot," she says, "and luckily, as offline shows quickly transitioned to online shows, work started coming in, and that's when Sejin popped up like a relief pitcher and asked me to work with him. It was a no-brainer because LIFT-OFF would have a completely different working DNA than mine, and since we'd already worked together, there would be less trial and error."
<21st Century Composers Series> Gyeonggi Sinawi Orchestra
They grew up experiencing different visual languages. Jinwoo grew up watching films, while Sejin Choi grew up watching comic books. They have different visual bases, so their approaches are different."Jinwoo is good at designing with bold lines. He has a good momentum to push forward with his ideas, and he has a clear centre and a clear point of view. Sejin Choi is strong on details. He likes to be descriptive or take a metaphorical and symbolic approach, and sometimes draws.
"We both try to aim for the centre of the bull's-eye, but in different ways. I tend to start with as many different sketches as possible, while Jinwoo tends to dig deeper into one or two directions, so we're good colleagues who can fill in each other's gaps. When I was just starting out in design, I used to feel good when one of Jinwoo's designs was chosen over mine, but now I don't feel that way at all. It's more of a relief to see Jinwoo working on a great draft next to me, because I want to make sure that the result is good and that the task is fulfilled. Designing is harder the more you do it, and it's harder when you do it alone, because you can see what's good about the other person's work and what needs to be improved, but you can't see those things in your own work. In such cases, we ask for feedback and say, 'I'm stuck, please come and take a look,' so even if it's not a 5:5 split, it's not anyone's work, it's LIFT-OFF's work that we made together."
Sejin Choi says that the more time he and Jinwoo Lee spent working together, the clearer their idea of collaboration became. "Being each other's art director and showing each other's work" is how LIFT-OFF collaborates. Based on this simple rule, LIFT-OFF has been garnering enthusiastic responses from the design industry and the public for the past five years.
Old-school design for two
LIFT-OFF also showcased motion graphic posters that blurred the lines between print and web design in an era of predominantly web-based design.
<Movement in the City> 2017 TypoFest entry
"I thought the moving poster was interesting, so I suggested it to the client first, and fortunately, they responded well. If a film specialist saw the motion we made, it would seem to be lacking. Motion posters have become a trend in the industry, but to be honest, we're both old-school people, so I'm not a trend follower, but I just try to understand things quickly and have an open mind." Art Director Sejin Choi tries to respond to change with "self-awareness".
"I think it's important to know what you like," he says, "and if you spend money and time on things you like consistently and over the long term, your interests will gradually broaden and you'll develop a taste. Once you have your own tastes and perspective, no matter which way time goes, you can respond well in terms of what you know and what you consume. Nobody can keep up with all the trends anyway. I want to be the person who is still designing in 10 years' time, thinking, 'Let's do what we love and what we can do better,' and I want to make LIFT-OFF a design studio that lasts."
<2022 People Outside the Door : 門外漢> Foundation for the Promotion of Traditional Crafts and Arts
They spent their undergraduate and design careers together. At school, they saw each other's differences, at work, they saw each other's flaws, and now, as co-owners of LIFT-OFF, they have the same outlook on life.
They are weak at maths. Collaboration and division of labour are not exactly a 5:5 split. However, their weakness for maths has helped them to co-run their design studio. If they had gone in with a no-lose mentality, there would have been discord. When making important decisions, think about the bottom line. Graphic design is a service industry. Designers are proud to be designers, but their philosophy is to produce honest, good work that meets the client's needs, and sometimes they can afford to put aside financial gain in favour of a curiously interesting project.
Now they see more in common. Art Director Choi Sejin defines their relationship as 'good friends and colleagues'. Art Director Jinwoo Lee prefers to define their relationship with a word that is not in the Korean dictionary.
"We've fought a lot, but I wonder if one day we'll be more than the 'good friends and colleagues' that Sejin says we are. If you look at my parents' old friends, there's a strong sense of solidarity that they've built by supporting each other through the ups and downs of life. I think that's what Sejin will be to me as time goes on, a word that doesn't exist in the Korean dictionary that goes beyond friends and colleagues."
I knocked on LIFT-OFF's door with the question, "What kind of people create designs that you want to look at once, look at twice, and look at again and again?" I finally heard the answer to that question. It's a great moment. If I were a designer, I would put this moment on a poster.
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