Sun Yao is a graphic designer based in Seoul and currently a doctoral candidate in Design at Seoul National University. Her design practice focuses on visual perception and reading experiences in multilingual environments, exploring the diversity of typography and graphic design in the process of communication. At the same time, she examines the boundaries and frictions of modernist design through the tension between rationality and sensibility in everyday life, seeking a critical design perspective on the relationships between form, content, and context. Her work has been recognized by the New York ADC, New York TDC, Tokyo TDC, D&AD New Blood, China GDC, Award360°, Hiiibrand, the Macau Design Awards Jury Award, the International Poster Biennials in China, Bolivia, and Moscow Golden Bee, as well as Jeonju International Film Festival’s 100 Films 100 Posters. Her work has also been featured in magazines and platforms such as Monthly Design, CA_Books, and Design360.
Thank you for speaking with us. Could you introduce your practice and how your background in visual design has shaped your artistic approach?
Hello, I am Sun Yao, a graphic designer living and working in Seoul, and I am currently a doctoral candidate in Design at Seoul National University. My creative and design practice mainly focuses on visual perception and reading experiences in multilingual environments, with particular attention to the complexity and diversity that typography and graphic design can produce in the process of communication.
In my work, I am especially interested in how text functions not only as a carrier of language but also as a visual form that participates in the production of meaning. Through the relationships between typography, layout, and graphic form, I seek to explore how information is seen, understood, misread, and even reconstructed across different languages and cultural contexts.
At the same time, I remain attentive to the tension between rationality and sensibility in everyday life, and I use this tension as a way to reconsider the order, function, and neutrality often emphasized in modernist design. I am particularly drawn to moments where form, content, and relationships come into friction, because such boundaries and conflicts allow design to move beyond mere communication and become a critical mode of observation and inquiry.
Your work moves between design thinking and artistic exploration. What interests you about working across these two modes?
I imagine that what you refer to as “design thinking” may be the rational sense of structure and rhythmic control visible in my typographic works, while “artistic exploration” perhaps appears more strongly in the graphic language of my practice, which tends to allow for greater emotional expression and openness. For me, these two modes are not opposed to one another, but rather represent two dimensions that I have been continually trying to balance and connect.
Typography, in comparison, is more rational, and its communicative function is often more direct; it emphasizes structure, order, and readability. Graphic language, by contrast, is more intuitive and affective. The meanings it conveys are often less fixed and may even carry a certain ambiguity, leaving more room for the viewer’s perception and imagination. From the perspective of communication, moving back and forth between these two modes also means searching for different ways of description and expression.
What truly interests me is how these two approaches can move beyond simple juxtaposition and instead permeate and support one another within the same work. In other words, I am interested not only in how they might be integrated into a more complete visual expression, but also in whether such integration can gradually develop into a methodology of my own.
As someone studying and working between China and Korea, how have these cultural contexts influenced the ideas or visual language in your work?
Although China and Korea both belong to the broader East Asian cultural sphere, I believe their design environments and developmental trajectories are in fact quite different. This difference has deeply influenced the way I understand design and visual language.
If we look at the historical development of modern design, Japan was relatively early, in the postwar period, in bringing back modernist ideas such as those of the Bauhaus and gradually integrating them with its own cultural context, thereby forming a relatively distinct and recognizable design language. By contrast, both China and Korea went through a longer period of searching and experimentation in the development of modern design. In Korea in particular, I sense that from the mid-to-late 2000s onward, as a generation of designers began to introduce modernist methods, attitudes, and visual logic into the local context in a more systematic way, Korean design underwent a significant transformation. Design was no longer defined solely by large firms; the emergence of small studios made the environment more flexible and vibrant, and gradually shaped the kind of design culture Korea is known for today—one that is highly modern while also capable of strong local adaptation.
I have always been deeply drawn to the sense of order, structure, and methodological rigor within modernist design, so when I began studying and working in Korea, I did not experience this environment as alienating. On the contrary, I found myself naturally attracted to it. For me, one of the most important qualities of the Korean design environment is its openness: exchange is frequent, external influences are absorbed quickly, and designers seem to possess a remarkable ability to learn, process, and transform outside methods into their own language. In some ways, this quality reminds me of K-pop. Its global success lies precisely in its ability to absorb elements from different cultures and reorganize them into a new form of expression.
At the same time, the design environment in China has encouraged me to think in a different way: within a context of rapid change and constant influx, how does a design culture truly form a language of its own? I believe this is still an ongoing process. Because I exist between the cultural contexts of both China and Korea, I have become increasingly sensitive to how design languages are introduced, transformed, and localized, and to why similar modernist methods can produce such different visual outcomes under different cultural conditions. This cross-cultural awareness has gradually become a significant part of my creative thinking.
Process often plays an important role in design and art alike. When developing a project, what usually guides your decisions—concept, material, or experimentation?
For me, a project rarely begins with material alone; more often, it begins with text. By “text,” I do not mean language in its narrow or literal sense, but rather a structure that can be entered, unfolded, and continuously generate meaning. Roland Barthes famously distinguished between the “work” and the “text”: the work is a fixed, complete object that can be analyzed and classified, whereas the text is something that invites us in—something mutable, shifting, expanding, and regenerating through each encounter. This distinction has deeply influenced the way I think. Rather than understanding design as the organization of already-given content, I am more interested in how design can reactivate a text—how it can move from being a passive object of consumption to becoming an experience that can be seen, entered, and felt anew.
As a designer who has long been engaged with typography, I am especially attentive to the semantics, context, and poetic potential within text. What draws me is often not simply what a sentence says, but how it is perceived, misread, and reorganized across different situations. For this reason, when developing a project, I often begin with the language itself, searching for the rhythm, structure, emotion, and tension embedded within it.
At the same time, I understand graphic design as a form of translation. The designer’s task is not merely to arrange words properly, but to transform language into a visual result. Coleman Barks once suggested that good translation is not merely semantic; the translator must find in the original something immeasurable, mysterious, and poetic, and reinterpret that essence in a new language. I strongly relate to this idea. For me, design is not simply a way of explaining content, but a way of converting those aspects of a text that resist direct articulation into a visual experience through typography, composition, and graphic form.
So if I were to say what usually guides my decisions, it would be the conceptual cues embedded within the text itself. Yet these concepts are not abstract slogans imposed from outside; rather, they emerge from within language. Experimentation is, of course, also essential, because I often need to test repeatedly in order to find the visual tone and formal relationship most appropriate to a project. Typography plays a particularly crucial role in this process: if text is the carrier of language, then type is its most concrete and expressive visual embodiment. Very often, it is through type that I try to articulate the specific character, mood, and individuality of each project.
How have the communities around you—whether cultural, artistic, or personal—shaped the way you approach your work?
Although I have a considerable following on social media, in everyday life, I am actually someone who is quite accustomed to solitude. Rather than being constantly immersed in lively social interactions, I more often think, observe, and work in a relatively quiet and independent state.
At the same time, I feel fortunate to live in Seoul, which is itself a city full of cultural stimulation. There are countless galleries, exhibition spaces, and art bookstores here, and it is possible to encounter new exhibitions and different kinds of creative work almost every day. Some of these come from designers, others from artists, and the boundary between the two is not always clearly defined. Being surrounded by this kind of environment has had a continuous influence on me: it has made me increasingly aware that design and art are not entirely separate practices, but rather two languages and methods that can permeate and borrow from one another.
So, although my personal way of working tends to be independent and inward, the cultural environment of the city itself functions as a very important kind of “community” for me. It is precisely these exhibitions, spaces, and works that I encounter in daily life that continue to shape the way I think about making, and that encourage me to keep searching for points of intersection between design and art.
Do you have any advice that you would offer to others?
I simply want to focus on doing my own work well, and I do not feel that I am in a position to offer much advice to others.
text & photo courtesy of Yao Sun
- Website: https://sun758857.wixsite.com/artist
- Instagram: @sunyao_design
