Na Kim on Design as ‘Found Fiction’ Amidst Defined Systems
The designer’s distinctive work combines personal history with a continually revolving set of rules
By Madeleine Morley
I like that when I interview designer Na Kim, we’re in a boxy apartment on the fifth floor of a Bruno Taut building in Berlin. I like it because in some ways, this style of architecture — with its modern, winding staircase painted various shades of bright red and shaped by the dictum of “form follows function” — is exactly where this design story begins. But seen in another light, this design story begins much further afield, in the city of Gwangju in Korea, in a small stationery shop where boarding school girls collect reams of bright polka dot stickers. This is because when it comes to Kim’s design process, rules and carefully devised systems combine with deeply entrenched personal memories to form something wholly distinctive, yet vigorously defined.
After studying product design at KAIST and graphic design at Hongik University in Korea, Kim moved to the Netherlands to complete a Master’s at Werkplaatz Typografie, studying under the guidance of the prolific Karel Martens. She later founded Table Union in Seoul, a design studio and creative platform, and designed Graphic magazine between 2009–2011. In 2018…
