Brochure for Tihany Design

The daughter of a Korean diplomat, Lee grew up moving from country to country: Korea, Portugal, India, Switzerland, Bulgaria. This unique and invaluable experience taught her to speak three languages, but perhaps more important, she says, it instilled in her an easy ability to relate to different people and cultures around the world.

At 17, Lee decided to get her college degree in the United States. She first pursued politics, earning a BA in International Political Economy & Diplomacy at the University of Bridgeport, Conn. It was only after some serious introspection that she decided to change course and pursue a BFA in graphic design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.

I was most happy doing creative things growing up, but didn’t give it a serious chance when it came time to choosing a “path.” Upon finishing my studies and a year of soul-searching I decided that I needed to give it a shot. It’s better to try something and regret it than regret never even trying it for the rest of your life. No regrets so far.

After FIT she briefly worked for the American Institute of Graphic Arts, then became a designer at Mirko Ilic Corp. where she was in charge of managing the studio and various accounts, as well as designing for projects with a special attention to hospitality design. With Ilic, former art director of the New York Times Op-Ed Pages and Time magazine, she worked on several high-end restaurants and hotel projects such as the Joule hotel and La Fonda Del Sol restaurant.

Said Ilic:

If one offers a decent amount of money today in the midst of economic problems and shortage of jobs, one is sure to get a talented and excellent designer. But when running a small studio such as mine, one needs to spend a third of the day with the designer. All the talent and excellence is not enough. The person must also be pleasant, funny, flexible, tolerant, especially working with me, and get used to bad Eastern European jokes. Jee turned out to fulfill all those categories. I don’t know why she’s so self-abusive but I’m grateful for her.

Identity and collateral for the Joule hotel.

Identity and collateral for La Fonda Del Sol restaurant

Lee now works with Milton Glaser in his studio just two floors down from Ilic, where she is responsible for what many might consider a dream account: Brooklyn Brewery. She also regularly collaborates with Yona Lee Design in Switzerland, where she has created many award-winning logos for various companies. Keeping busy with client work has not stopped her from also doing pro-bono work for nonprofit organizations such as Sarvodaya USA (an organization dedicated to helping disaster-stricken areas), for which she continues to create and lead strong visual campaigns.

We sat down with Lee to talk about her work and her inspiration (and also to try to get her to stir things up between Ilic and Glaser. (In true diplomatic form, she didn’t bite.)

How do you think your upbringing impacted your design work?
I think the experience has helped me to relate easily to people from different cultures, religious backgrounds and nationalities. I feel like a world citizen before anything else. Growing up in several countries has also helped me to understand design as a universal language that is “borderless” — it can reach people regardless of what language they speak, from New York to Timbuktu.

You have worked with both Mirko and now Milton. That’s a pretty impressive resume. Without getting into too much trouble, can you describe the differences working for them both?
Great minds think alike. They have a lot more in common than not — for starters, both their names begin with M-i. I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to work with them, and feel that every day is an education, both in design and in life.

Catalog cover design for Davor Vrankic's exhibition Let Me Make You Real

You’ve worked on quite a number of different kinds of design and branding projects, from hotels to beer to logos. What is your preference and where do you see your career heading in the future?
Each type of design is challenging and fun in its own way, so I enjoy the unique problem-solving aspect of all of them. I would like to continue doing a variety of work and take on new challenges, not limit myself to one type of design.

Various logo work by Jee-eun Lee

Obviously there is a huge movement in design toward the digital side of things. Is that something you have explored and are you interested in working in a more digital medium down the line? If so, which one?
I believe good taste and design principles can be translated from one platform to another, with some adjustments and considerations. I would like to expand my comfort zone from print to include digital media — whatever may come tomorrow.

You’ve participated in quite a few projects with a social responsibility message (breast cancer and hunger awareness, to name a couple). Is bringing attention to civil and social issues something you’re passionate about? Do you think it’s the responsibility of the design community to bring attention to these matters?
I think every person takes from the world around them, so it makes sense to give back. It does not necessarily have to be through design, or money, as long as what they do comes from the heart and is a genuine attempt.

Urgent humanitarian issues such as hunger do strike a chord with me because I have seen firsthand how some people struggle to have the most basic things we take for granted daily in this part of the world.

What is one project you created that Mirko claims he did? Milton?
They’re both more than generous with sharing credit.

What is your take on the present state of design in America? Abroad?
Question: What is a camel?  Answer: A horse, designed by a committee. There are too many camels (no offense to camels).

You do some work with Milton on the Brooklyn Brewery account. Are you, in fact, paid in beer?
If they like the designs, they fill my bathtub with Brooklyn Lager.

Click here to see more of Jee’s work.

Copyright F+W Media Inc. 2011.

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Why bones? What is your message here?
When I created the iconic series “Stop the Violence” in 2007-8,  I needed an alphabet in order to make the words, like “WAR” (below). (You can see more images on my website under portfolio and fine art.)

How long did it take to find such a perfect assortment of them?
I ordered them through a U.S. company specializing in disarticulated human skeletons, and a week later I received a container with 206 pieces of the human body.

The arrangement and composition must have taken some time. What was your organizing criteria?
Naturally, legibility. But working on my floor with a five-foot-wide template and checking my computer on and off made it a touch easier. Each letter took an average of a day to produce, because often after a few hours I wouldn’t be satisfied with the progress of the letter, and I would start from scratch.

You’ve photographed lots of different “found” alphabets. Why is this your metier?
As an ex–graphic designer I have designed six typefaces, but I never photographed a complete alphabet — just some isolated beautiful letters or words — during all my running around the globe.

That’s just the kind of response the partners were looking for. Since coming aboard ZA!, Griffiths had been turning out bracing, acerbic graphic work for clients such as Bloomberg Businessweek, as well as iPad apps for Condé Nast titles. “Whenever we hire Zut, we always get really wild ideas,” says Gary Fogelson, whose firm, Other Means, has commissioned illustration from the office for Bloomberg’s editorial page, Bloomberg View. Appropriating familiar images and pairing them with bitingly sarcastic text, Griffiths and Zut Alors! have articulated a distinct visual language; what it says, Fogelson says, is “fuck you.” It’s an attitude that gets attention, and if it gives the client some in-your-face cred, so much the better for them.

Zut Alors! website ,2011

Yale Graphic Design M.F.A. 2011 website, with Juan Astasio Soriano and Brian Watterson, 2011

Paperweight for senior thesis, 2011

The message comes through in infographics, bookmaking, and typography, but perhaps nowhere more so than on the firm’s website, full of blind alleys and blinking icons. This iconoclastic approach matches Griffith’s own. At school, he and a group of colleagues created the Book Trust, a theory-minded but tangible design catalog in which other artists could purchase “shares”; they peddled it — in full corporate drag, name tags and all — around the New York Art Book Fair.

The Book Trust Prospectus, published by Investment Future Strategy, Ltd., with Benjamin Critton, Harry Gassel, Zak Klauck, and Mylinh Nguyen, 2012

“Almost all of graphic design is very commercial, including a lot of work I make,” Griffiths says. Alternating satire with confrontation, he is trying to work his way out of the design-world straitjacket, even as he’s piecing together how to operate a professional partnership. Griffiths says, “We’re just figuring it out as we go along.”

See the other 2012 New Visual Artists:

• Sang Mun
• Erin Schell
• Berton Hasebe
• Drea Zlanabitnig
• Casper Heijkenskjöld
• Kelsey Dake
• Jerome Corgier
• Tracy Ma
• Olimpia Zagnoli
• Ryan Thacker
• John Passafiume
• Lisa Hedge
• Jungyeon Roh
• Dafi Kühne
• Jing Wei
• Caleb Bennett
• Naz Sahin
• Serifcan Ozcan
• Brendan Griffiths
• George Michael Brower

More Design Resources:

• Learn about the next generation of app design from one of the industry’s leaders!
• Available now: Print Magazine’s Guest Art Director Digital Collection
• Get an inside look at logo design from Chermayeff & Geismar

Concocting trade characters from the products or the things they represent derives from a long tradition — dating back to medieval trade markings and up through the golden age in the early 20th century (and beyond).

French designers were indeed quite fond of playful mnemonic manipulation, as the examples here for steel wool cleaners, pots and pans, teas and coffees from the 1920s and ’30s attest. The characters are quite surreal yet none so abstract that the message is lost. Made from the packages or from the products themselves, these characters are not as cuddly as Speedy Alka Seltzer or the Mt. Olive Pickle man, but they do have an artful presence and charm.

Fascination? More like well-earned trepidation. After all, during World War II, London was blitzed nightly by German bombs and rockets, its citizenry enduring what most civilized beings could barely imagine. If Hitler had developed the atomic bomb, England would have suffered the same fate as Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

England was forced to develop a sophisticated civil-defense apparatus, which included publishing cautionary guides like this handbook “Advising The Householder on Protection Against Nuclear Attack.” With the same kind of low-key narrative that a “householder” might read on how to survive a bug or rodent infestation, this “training publication for the civil defense, the police and fire services” addresses protective measures, needed equipment, what to do after an attack, and how to “manage” life “under fall-out conditions.” The text is reservedly quaint, underplaying the tragic impact of nuclear war, and the illustrations lack the slightest hint of horror. Indeed, by Jove, it is actually kind of comforting.

Similar handbooks in the United States were shrill by comparison. While they suggested that survival was possible, the magnitude of a nuclear attack was never minimized.

This handbook was republished by the V&A in 2008—for what purpose, other than nostalgia, is unclear. I reproduce it here as a curio from a time when our biggest enemy was the Soviet Union. With all the natural and man-made potential catastrophes at our doorstep, one almost longs for those days.

art: Rick Griffin

There’s something happening here, but you don’t know what it is — do you, Mr. Draper? One year later, Rolling Stone magazine will make its debut, followed soon by “Rock and Other Four Letter Words.”

“Rock,” a 250-plus-page Bantam paperback, was published in January 1968 and subtitled “Music of the Electric Generation.” It was one of the first books of its kind, chronicling a cultural revolution that was still in the midst of its own creation. Crammed with black-and-white portraits of bands and musicians, it’s part oral history, part visual LSD trip. One of its fold-out spreads has an intricate, circuitlike diagram that connects over a hundred names, from the Butterfield Blues Band, the Beach Boys, and the Byrds to Busby Berkeley, Brubeck and Bach.

The editor-designer was a writer named J Marks. The photographer for most of the images was Linda Eastman, who went on to work for Rolling Stone and — oh, yes — marry Paul McCartney.

By the sheer force of its graphic presentation, ”Rock and Other Four Letter Words” conveys the mid-1960s music scene’s spirit, vitality and relevance.