In the past couple months I have been working for a horridly designed website HappyKorean.com. It was designed to be a social networking portal for the local Korean community around Chicago, but it follows no standards on both front and back-ends, truly frustrating me when assigned to temporary fixes. The user experience is also quite sub-par.

I do get to do a decent amount of graphic design for it, though, with my Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash skill sets. This includes newspaper ads (shown to the left), animated banners, pamphlets, posters, flags, and so much more. The one on the left represents my first newsprint publication – and full page! This was on Chicago Korea Weekly – sadly they don’t seem to have a website – and there have been other handful of newspaper ads I made on Kyocharo, as well as all sorts of web ads since this. I may post them here in the future, but since I am still a bit embarrassed by the website, perhaps I will wait.

I will wait because currently I am working on a complete redesign and reprogramming of HK to follow the standards (mainly CSS), do better with SEO and have a better user experience. This is probably going to take a few months, but do keep checking back because I will be sure to post about it when it is done.

Oh. My. God. This is one of the most genius things I have seen in a long time. Just in time for my move to a new apartment too; I can’t wait to use this. Sent to me by my good friend Jeremy, picture courtesy of whatthechrist.

I recently watched Paris, Je t’aime through Netflix because my girlfriend is a Natalie Portman fanatic and insists she watches every film she has ever been in. While I expected a sappy chick flick, I was pleasantly surprised to find it a rather pleasant collection of classy short films, all directed by very reputable directors with an all-star cast, including aforementioned Portman, Steve Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Elijah Wood, and more.

All of these short movies take place in Paris, yet determinedly leave the viewer with an open ending. Most follow highly eclectic characters through the plots’ rising action, starting without any set-up and ending without resolution. You would think this would drive you nuts with curiosity, but the beauty of this film is that you will have a good time imagining what “might have happened.” A couple segments expand on the classic American tourist vs. crazy French people conflict; I would not advise watching it with an already-judgmental Francophobic friend. Then again, the French people aren’t nearly as weird as Elijah Wood in this film.

The indie feel, relative obscurity and heartwarming plots on the universal theme of love make this movie a fantastic choice for post-dinner-date invitations.