How might we reveal that different linguistic selves can be made from the same visual elements?
Feb 2019 (1 week) /
Eunjung Kim (Independent Project)
Ego in Translation: EUNJUNG 은정
Ego in Translation is a short, one-week project that began with a personal observation: I often feel like a slightly different person depending on the language I’m speaking. When I speak English, I find myself more outgoing than when I speak in Korean. Maybe it’s the tone, the phrasing, or the cultural expectations embedded in each language. This shift in personality—or ego—sparked a question: Even if I express myself differently, am I not still the same person beneath the surface?
That curiosity became the starting point of this project. I wanted to express the feeling of having two egos—one shaped by Korean, and the other by English—while also acknowledging that they come from the same source. To explore this, I visualized my name—Eunjung—in both Korean and English, using the exact same set of geometric shapes. Rearranging those identical forms produced two entirely different names. The result was a simple but powerful way to show that even when my linguistic selves feel different, they’re still built from the same parts.
Adobe Illustrator
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Adobe After Effects
1. Framing the Design Question
The project began with a moment of self-awareness. I hadn’t thought much about how language shaped my personality—until I caught myself responding differently in English and Korean. Not just in words, but in tone, timing, even the way I made eye contact. These small shifts opened up a larger question about language, identity, and design.
I wasn’t interested in defining a fixed identity. Instead, I wanted to embrace the fluidity of self across languages—and use visual language to reflect that. One day, while sketching, I noticed that the Korean characters in my name, 은정, could be broken down into geometric shapes—rectangles, circles, triangles. That made me wonder—could I also build “Eunjung” with those same forms? What started as a typographic experiment became a way of thinking about identity: Could a name, rearranged, become a metaphor for something deeper?
2. Research Process & Insights
I began by sketching out my Korean name, 은정, using a limited set of geometric shapes. Then I challenged myself to construct my English name, Eunjung, using only those same forms. No shapes were added or removed—only repositioned. This constraint became the framework of the project.
It wasn’t just a formal design decision, but a conceptual one. If I could build two names—two linguistic selves—from the same set of pieces, it could speak to a deeper idea: that even when my personalities shift across languages, I’m still made of the same parts.
The visual transformation became a metaphor. Identity isn’t fixed—it flexes with languages, culture, and context. But that doesn’t make it inconsistent—just layered.
This raised a larger question for me: How might visual design capture the tension between linguistic expression and identity?
That question became a quiet engine behind this project—guiding how I approached each shape, and how meaning might emerge not from what changes, but from what stays the same.
3. Ideation & Concept Development
The form was simple: no interface, no interaction—just shapes.
I designed the shapes to be rearranged, so viewers could see how “Eunjung” and “은정” were connected. When placed in one configuration, the shapes spell out “Eunjung” in Roman letters. Rearranged, they become “은정” in Hangul.
What mattered to me wasn’t just showing the transformation—but evoking the quiet shift between two selves that aren’t opposites, just reflections.
4. Final Design & Reflection
It wasn’t really about typography or language systems. It was about what it feels like to live between them. To feel more confident or expressive in English, more careful or reserved in Korean—and to realize that both are true, even when they don’t feel the same.
These shapes don’t resolve the tension between my two egos. They just show that it’s all still me.
<Transformation through sameness>