Welcome to Pop Talk, a continuation of the Pudding Designer Interviews. These micro-interviews are quick looks into the work and music tastes of designers all over the world.
PD: Describe your current role as a designer.
CH: I’m an independent designer (I do some freelance work, my own self initiated projects, and work with friends) and a teacher in Visual Design at Seoul National University.
P: Describe your relationship with music today and in the past.
CH: I don’t play music myself, but am generally interested in keeping up with trends and the discussion around pop music as a listener. In the past I used to feel very connected to a persona associated with the types of music I listened to — like to seek out obscure music to be sort of a snob, or before that I subscribed to/felt boxed in by the 90s and early 2000s hyper-masculine rap culture. I still enjoy seeking out new (to me) music and go through phases of listening to music during all my free time, to days or weeks where I don’t really listen to music at all.
PD: What designer do you think is most like a musician?
CH: I might categorize this in a few ways…
One is there’s designers who work translating music to visuals explicitly — either as notation or working within the music industry. In this way I think of designers like Braulio Amado, Eric Timothy Carlson (I just saw his work at Typojanchi, so maybe this is why he’s on my mind…), Somnath Bhatt, Mary Yang, Goeun Park, or many well-known album art designers like Peter Saville, etc. who may qualify as musician-like in this way.
I think there’s also designers whose work has musicality — like rhythmic qualities – on which they riff over and over again. I may categorize Experimental Jetset, Kazunari Hattori, and Chris Ro as designers like this.
Most often I think about a visual connection between music and design, but there’s probably another connection around language and systems which is a bit too cerebral for me… Like, maybe there’s some overlap between music theory and design theory and production – maybe someone with a big intellect like John Maeda could talk about this…
PD: What musician is most like a designer?
CH: was thinking a lot about this, and I think there’s a couple of musicians that designers want “to be like designers”.
Brian Eno is sort of a north star for a certain generation of designer – with the advent of oblique strategies, ambient music, and so on which feel very designer-ly.
Circa 2015 Kanye, also comes to mind, when Yeezy clothing and shoes, the floating stage for TLOP tour, etc. were in full force, before his several meltdowns. Now I don’t think any designer would really want to claim Kanye.
Nowadays, I think maybe the musician who is most like a designer would be Travis Scott? Unfortunately, his work is super derivative, what he says is his taste in design is pretty bad (Campbell's Soup cans are the best design? it feels so lame and forced, but at least it has a point-of-view?), and I don’t think he’s ever had a truly great album. Yet, his work has a signature style, feels very adaptable and pieced together from many sources, and responds and commands the moment. So, he seems like a savvy cultural operator in a way designers strive to be.
Oh, and maybe Pentagram or one of the other brand behemoths would be like DJ Khaled.
PD: What is the most influential piece of record art you've encountered?
CH: Do you mean album art? Ambient Music 1: Music for Airports really unlocked itself over time for me (as did the album itself). While it’s hard for me to understand how it may have been received when it was released, the typography, layout, and imagery doesn’t necessarily feel extraordinary today. However, as a visual series, I feel it establishes a language that perfectly syncs with the music as something impressionistic, topographic and textured, and somehow placeless. I think as I became more familiar with the music, the art opened up to me in a new way. That plus the graphic notation of the compositions themselves within the album artwork blew my mind a bit when I learned about it.
PD: Describe how music integrates into your design life and career?
CH: I’m starting to use some music in my work – although this is through commissioning sound pieces. For instance, for one of my recent works – a website collaboration with Federico Pérez Villoro – we commissioned Tiger Dingsun to create a programmatic composition. I’m also very interested in AI, and how these AI models are being produced, so am looking more into audio’s role in things like deepfakes, or more generally music creation are coming into fruition.
PD: What kind of music do you usually listen to when working?
CH: It depends on what sort of work i’m doing… If I’m writing or coding I tend to listen to music without singing – some of my favorites are BTTB by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Music for Nine Post Cards by Hiroshi Yoshimura. If I’m doing something more visual, I will listen to rap music or K-pop. Recently I’ve been listening to Dave, Danny Brown, Nujabes, Newjeans, LE SSERAFIM, and Red Velvet.
PD: If you could have a "intro" song for when you come into the office or studio, what would it be?
CH: Superhyphy by Keak da Sneak
Thanks Chris for ghost riding the whip with us at Pudding!