I work as a graphic artist, interactive visual designer, and researcher in pursuit of visual innovation throughout the collaboration between art, design and technology since 2001.

As a graphic artist, I am interested in experimenting with traditional and culturally oriented visual expressions such as calligraphy to create my own graphic identity. Throughout my work, I reinterpret their values into modern and contemporary visual forms. I enjoy working with programming codes directly to overcome the limitation of the Graphic User Interface System of Adobe Packages such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator to explore new typographic solutions.

For instance, the pattern design that I created using coding was selected into the magazine, PRINT 2006 LX:II,Living Ornament. Later it was reinterpreted as the cover arts for the book, Graphic Design: the New Basics, written by Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips, published by Princeton Architectural Press. The New York Times Magazine invited my letter design as a graphics for the weekly ‘On Language’ column written by William Safire on Nov 2008. I designed the letters for the annual “Year in Ideas” issue for the New York Times Magazine with Ricard Marxer in 2008.

I love working in collaboration with people, who have different academic backgrounds including literature, computer science, performing arts, etc. For instance, my research paper,” The Review of Processing as a Graphic Designer’s Education Tool,” has been selected in the third biennial design education symposium, “School of Thoughts III 2007.” with the co-presentor, Gregory May, who has English Literature background. The New York Times Magazine projects were referenced by Caligraft, created by Ricard Marxer, in the fields of Perception and Cognition Computer in Spain as a PhD candidate.

My MFA thesis, “TYPE+CODE,” shows the aesthetics of experimental code driven typography, with an emphasis on the programming language, Processing, which is a programming language for artists and designers. “TYPE+CODE” shows the possibilities how to use the codes, based on mathematic expressions, algorithms and libraries, to transform into visual languages. It was extended as a tutorial book with two collaborators, Viviana Cordova and John Page Corrigan. It was published by Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008 and it was presented at Massaging Media 2: AIGA Design Educators Conference 2008 in Boston.

I am interested in making academic bridges between the non-design world such as areas of technology and the design world, to get inspired each other. For instance, “TYPE+CODE” were developed as a tutorial book for graphic designers who have limited knowledge in programming coding, which was considered computer programmer dominated. The content of “TYPE+CODE Processing for Designers” was structured and its description was written by using visual principles and functions to teach the directing coding to graphic design majors and graphic designers.

My designs are engaged in making various means of physical communication involving images, sound, performance presented through common devices such as cell phones. For instance, my typographic patterns were extended as an interactive piece through Sonia, which is a real time frequency analysis of the microphone input in Processing. My letters were connected through cell phone performance in collaboration with, Joel Bobeck and Michael Ries, by using Python, a video projector, and a blue tooth adapter.

My works have been exhibited in South Korea, Japan, and the United States. I was selected for the Asia Digital Art Awards in the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan in 2002 and I received the Korean Honor Scholarship supporting talented and perspective Korean blood students in USA from the Ambassador of Republic of Korea in 2006. My banner design was selected by The Urban Forest Project of Baltimore in 2008. “TYPE+CODE Processing for Designers” is invited to the exhibition, Dimension and Typography, in Chicago in 2009. I received Graduate Fellowship from The Master of Fine Arts Program in Graphic Design at Maryland Institute College of Art in 2009. Mu works were featured as a cover artist for the magazine, Letter Arts Review, in January, 2010.