Ep.6 Designer ➔ Illustrator - Pen Artist Ha-jeong Lee Series

Through the art galleries of London and the streets of Edinburgh, I found a clear answer. I promised myself I wouldn't just create pretty, technically flawless drawings, but 'powerful designs' imbued with my own philosophy.

However, as soon as my resolve solidified, a new thirst washed over me. Powerful design wasn't something achieved simply by sitting at a desk for hours drawing lines. To truly enjoy the world and move people's hearts, I first had to understand how this world works.

Instead of getting drunk on the superficial romance of these massive cities, I decided to dig into the real lives of the locals and the grand currents shaping them. Experiencing the world outside the canvas firsthand—I thought, "Isn't this the true essence of the self-taught study abroad journey I embarked on with my backpack?"

Micro Tastes

Every time I moved to a new city, the first place I unpacked and headed to was undoubtedly the bookstore. Rather than hot spots perfect for flashy photos, the bookstore displays—stacked raw with the genuine interests of locals—revealed the city's true colors most transparently.

At a bookstore in London, I had to stop in my tracks. The categories organizing the books were completely different from the world I knew. Instead of a general 'Sports' section, there was 'football' and 'baseball'; instead of 'Food', there were 'vegan' and 'diet cook'. There was even a section proudly filling an entire shelf dedicated to 'LGBT for Teens'. These micro tastes and the sheer volume of information starkly showed me how narrow my view of the world had been.

Feeling Prices on My Skin

The local supermarkets, which solved the meals of a hungry traveler, also became excellent classrooms. Why are prices cheaper in Italy when it's also part of Europe? Why do price tags in Turkey fluctuate almost daily?

The countless questions thrown at the numbers on the shelves naturally led to an exploration of the global economy and history. These were truly living questions I could never have asked sitting in front of a monitor. For the first time, I was reading the currents of the world for myself.

An Encounter with AI

Whenever I went to a new city, grabbing a seat at a co-working space and observing the monitors of other creators over their shoulders became my new routine. And it was there that I faced an incident that shattered my last bit of pride.

A designer friend from Mexico, whom I happened to strike up a conversation with, said he wanted to show me something interesting and opened the AI tool 'DALL-E'. With just a few lines of prompts, the unique pen drawing style I had spent so much time desperately holding a pen to perfect was generated on the screen in a single minute.

As he looked at my inability to hide my breathless dismay, the casual remark he threw pierced me like a dagger.

"Ha-jeong! Designers need to know about technology, and more broadly, how the world works."

My mind went completely blank. The so-called 'technique' I had obsessed over—huddled at my desk focusing only on line thickness and composition—was nothing but a very flimsy shell that AI could instantly replace. Even my thought of creating 'powerful designs' had ultimately been trapped within the boundaries of 'visual intensity and perfection'.

Deciding to Become a Person Who Draws Narratives

A few days after that incident, I stood at the end of a long line at the hottest specialty cafe in Barcelona. It took a long time to get a single cup of coffee, and the price was wicked, yet people filled the space without a single complaint.

The people gathered there weren't calculating the cost-effectiveness or efficiency of the coffee. They insisted on the unique taste roasted directly with the cafe's own philosophy and were enjoying the experience the brand offered.

'So the reason people go wild and are willing to pay isn't simply because the result is visually pretty!'

While sketching people in a corner of the cafe, the tangled threads inside me smoothly unraveled. That 'something' people go wild for is created when they resonate with the deep tastes contained within it and the stories being told.

I decided then and there that I must become someone who tells my own story.

That day, I quietly set down the title of 'designer' I had held onto so tightly. Instead, I filled that empty space with a new identity: 'Illustrator'. Not just a technician delivering pretty results, but someone who creates and conveys narratives by putting their own philosophy and stories at the tip of their pen. Someone who communicates with the world by moving people's hearts with stories.

And with that, my long, self-taught study abroad journey was drawing to a close.