hwa-jin jun
info
...is an art director / graphic des­ign­er born in the year of the dog. She is a cons­­um­­mate hik­­ing am­­ateur, and enjoys spend­ing her time out­­doors ten­­d­ing to her bud­d­ing ba­­ck­­yard veg­­e­­table gard­­en. At her core, she is a ten­­aci­ous ex­plor­­er and co­ns­tant learn­er; Hwa‑Jin adept­ly trans­­lates her un­­abash­­ed cur­ios­ity and un­con­ventional st­yle into her prac­­tice in­vol­v­ing inter­­active dig­i­tal ex­p­er­­iences and pro­cess-driven, collage-like des­igns. She is cur­rent­ly the des­ign dir­ector of C Magazine, Canada's foremost print mag for contemporary art and criticism.
Catalogue & Social Assets /
Design Director

Client: C Magazine

Every year, C Magazine hosts an art auction featuring works generously donated by artists working in painting, photography, sculpture, textile, & beyond; profits directly support C Magazine in its mission to engage our community through Canadian-led contemporary art & art writing.     Speech bubble shapes visually organized into something not unlike back-and-fourth comic dialogue created the basis of the catalogue's design language. A traditional auction is snappy, with a speedy back-and-fourth carried out between the auctioneer & audience; using the classic visuals of speech bubbles to embody auction "conversation" is a playful way of embodying the event.

C Magazine (est. 1984) is Canada’s foremost critical periodical on contemporary art & culture. Covering Canadian & international art, C includes among its contributors nationally & internationally renowned critics, curators, scholars, & artists. Each issue’s specific thematic focus offers a forum for the in-depth exploration of a relevant topic. C’s print edition is published three times a year, & distributed throughout Canada & Europe.
Identity Design & Branding /
Art Director & Illustrator

Client: DesignTO

DesignTO Festival 2023 is an annual week-long celebration of art & design taking place across Toronto. With this being the first time since '20 that the festival would be in-person, I felt a responsibility to connect festival-goers with an experience centered around physical form. As such, my design process was driven by the goal of imbuing the festival’s illustrations with feelings of journeyed paths & zeal.
     Bending & folding 3D forms were created in representation of both the myriad of creative works exhibited during the Festival as well as the walking paths patrons take through exhibits. These shapes emerge from layers upon layers of transparent gradient, tied together by a wandering dotted line that visualizes a patron’s journey exhibit-to-exhibit across Toronto.

DesignTO Festival is Canada’s leading & largest annual design festival that celebrates design as a multidisciplinary form of creative thinking & making, with 100+ free exhibitions & events forming Toronto’s design week every January.
Social Assets
Design Director & Illustrator

Client: C Magazine

Vitamin C is an event series bringing readers and art enthusiasts live seminars, art talks, workshops, and more, all revolving around themes of energy, community, and bursts of well-needed creative nutrition.
     Social media 'stickers' are created in the vein of fruit stickers, and used to denote on an Instagram feed that a Vitamin C event is incoming. These are meant to be used in bundles of three, such that the phrase "Vitamin C Programming" are whimiscally spelled out. Bright colours and fun illustrations collide with the cheekiness of fruit stickers to impart to viewers feelings of excitement and energy.

C Magazine (est. 1984) is Canada’s foremost critical periodical on contemporary art & culture. Covering Canadian & international art, C includes among its contributors nationally & internationally renowned critics, curators, scholars, & artists. Each issue’s specific thematic focus offers a forum for the in-depth exploration of a relevant topic. C’s print edition is published three times a year, & distributed throughout Canada & Europe.
Brand & identity design /
Art Director & Lead Designer

Client: Azure Magazine

The AZ Awards is AZURE’s international architecture and design competition, recognizing excellence and innovation, and showcasing the world’s best projects, products and ideas.
     Built on an isometric grid and grounded in a 2-dimensional environment, brightly coloured shapes were created as the main design element used throughout the gala, used individually or as pieces within a modular system. Most of the shapes are intended to have physically impossible structures IRL; when put together they form complex forms that defy perspective. These impossible shapes visually represent the design mindsets honoured throughout the show—boundary-breaking and different.
AZURE is an award-winning, international magazine with a focus on contemporary architecture and design. In six visually stunning issues a year, AZURE delivers coverage of architecture, interiors, product design, landscape design and urbanism. Through profiles of top architects and designers, stories about transformative projects, and trend news from major design fairs around the world, AZURE anticipates the future, provides invaluable insight and shines a spotlight on the issues, ideas and people that matter.
Print Magazine /
Design Director

Client: C magazine

As C's design director I art direct & design the magazine, working with the editor & creatives to create layouts that showcase the talented writers & artists of each issue.

C Magazine (est. 1984) is Canada’s foremost critical periodical on contemporary art & culture. Covering Canadian and international art, C includes among its contributors nationally and internationally renowned critics, curators, scholars, & artists. Each issue’s specific thematic focus offers a forum for the in-depth exploration of a relevant topic. C’s print edition is published three times a year, & distributed throughout Canada & Europe.
Typographic Logo /
Illustrator

Client: Ka Yan

Emergence, healing, energy—these are keywords which began a wayfaring journey into the creation of a seal & logo for artist Ka Yan's healing, online presence.
     What better represents Ka Yan than the first character of her name—家, which means "home". The evolution of the character was studied, & we fell upon a form that is neither here nor there. I strove to bring out the emotion & history of this character, using ink calligraphy to capture its essence on paper. This was then used to create a negative stencil by which gradient pencil dotting was applied, forming the very emergence we sought to visualize. To ensure that the textured essence was well-visualized no matter the environment, two versions—a finely dotted seal, & a medium sized, screentone-patterned logo were hand drawn & pencil-dotted, meant to live in a large format & small format, respectively.

Ka Yan is a multidisciplinary artist & creative hailing from Hong Kong who has exhibited at the NY Art Book Fair & MoMA PS1. Her photographic monograph, "520", can be found in the collections of the Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library of the Metropolitan Museum & the Asian Art Archive in America.
Fashion Graphics /
Graphic Designer

Client: KOZABURO (NYC/TOKYO)

What if friends got together & collaborated with a fashion brand...just because? The NYC-based, Bowling is Divine club did just that, working with lauded Japanese designer Kozaburo on a capsule collection that balances the casual yet passionate nature of an unserious social club.
    Visualized in a riffed-on '100' emoji that is the defacto emoticon of the group chat, & a graffiti'ed version of the club's catch-phrase, the capsule focuses on unserious clothes—sweats, ballcaps, & hoodies—for unserious people & unserious activities.

KOZABURO is a utility wear label by 2017 LVMH winner Kozaburo Akasaka, inspired by the karate "kimono" that designer Kozaburo Akasaka has worn since his childhood. The new classic wear fits the lifestyle of the 2020s or even further into the future, regardless of generation, gender, body shape, or race, based on the spirit of "Enryu" (harmony & coexistence of individuals with each other). The three-dimensional silhouettes created by patterns that takes into account the body's structure is light & weightless. Each detail that can be customized by the wearer offers unlimited possibilities, even for everyday wear.
Website & poster design /
Coder & Designer

Client: OCAD U
Test the website's interface here!

The OCAD U Design Department hosts lecture series throughout the year. A website & several digital posters were created for marketing purposes.
     The intent was to create a concept that would be equally as interesting as email posters & as a website. Research & process both initialize a search for a something that aids in the maturation of one’s project. I visualized this idea with colour variations & the use of blur to mimic the drift of focus/out-of-focus that we seem to fluctuate through as we undergo making. As you move your mouse across the screen, colours paint the display; a click erases all strokes. Because the posters are not interactive, how the strokes interacted with the type was adjusted to maintain legibility all the whilst maintaining the visual theme.
Web interaction & print zine /
Artist & Coder

Client: Xpace
Scroll through the interactive piece here!

I was chosen as one of 16 artists to participate in Xpace's annual Zineposium for the 2022 year.
     A plum blossom deconstructed & reconstructed to create a new yet recognizable form. As a zine, it is a bendable cut-out which creates a 3D bouquet. Click Here to slowly scroll through the wip digital interface. Created with Blender & After Effects.
Print Book /
Art Director & Designer

Client: Xpace Cultural Arts Centre

VOLUME is a perf­ect bo­und & gl­ossy-covered, full-colour 214-page print bo­ok, with dimen­sions of 8" x 10". A bat­ch of 300 un­its was print­ed.
     VOLUME 12 commemorates artists & writers exhibited at Xpace during '20-'21. Resonating with 70s punk culture, '20-'21 was a time of making do with what one had, thus inspiring my art direction with the quirks of punk-zine making. Subtle design elements within the book include images treated with roughly-cut borders & ballpoint pen digital brushes custom-built for the creation of underlines & glyphs. Yellow highlighter lines made from digitally-treated marker scans were also created to highlight text citations in a book dotted with interesting references. The result is an expressive yet clean art book that proudly displays the work of Xpace's exhibited creatives in a culturally relevant environment.

Xpace Cultural Centre (est. 2004, Toronto CANADA) is a not-for-profit artist-run centre dedicated to providing emerging & student artists, designers, curators & writers with opportunities to showcase their work in a professional setting. Xpace approaches programming as a form of world-building: providing exhibitions, events, panels & workshops that respond to the direct needs & interests of our communities & membership.
Web Interaction & poster /
Designer


A collection of forum posts exploring dulled taste are juxtaposed against pixelations of 'perfect' food eaten at restaurants around the world pre-pandemic, creating an interactive writing exercise and poster.
     The curated dining-out experience has disappeared during the pandemic. Hot becomes cold, crispy becomes soggy, and food isn't eaten as it is meant to be. A forum topic about dental appliances causing negative taste changes evokes a similar sentiment. Our memories of perfect food have become distant, blurred memories; meanwhile, our presently eaten food has become sad & many times, unenjoyable. Follow the trail of conversations to further understand people's experiences with changed taste, or take matters into your own hands & create a poem from the green text by hiding or showing text, courtesy of the moveable food & text-hiding button.
Type exercise /
Graphic Designer


This exercise aims to explore the beauty that a computer can create with code—in particular, javascript. Using the package p5.js, sine-waves, & a lot of elbow grease, these analog-esque images came fourth from the input of Liberation Sans letters into my custom code.



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