Ahra Kwon and her little utopias

Her most recent project exemplifies this: a long wall-display illustration for Hyundai celebrating this Year of the Ox.

"In this illustration," Ahra tells us, "the employees of Hyundai form together to make the number '2021.' Creating new letters for numbers with all the characters in harmony was a big challenge for me."

Ahra is based in Seoul, South Korea, and has worked with clients such as Facebook, Samsung and more. She works in various fields like editorial, advertising, books and social media, with a personal interest in enchanting kind of environments, and a vibrant colour palette.

"My style is mostly inspired by books and classic vintage images. I love searching for posters or advertisements created before the 1980s. The artists before that time mainly used very bold graphic composition, which gives me many visual ideas."

For Ahra, setting up compositions is vital, and when she finishes up with a sketch, she uses Adobe Photoshop as her main tool of choice. In future, she'd love to create more dynamic images in various compositions, not just using a flat viewpoint but also other perspectives.

From her career so far, the illustrator is most proud of working with one particular Big Tech client.

"I did several works for Apple's Today Tab.; in each project, I was commissioned to deliver particular messages. It was challenging for me to show the message intuitively rather than explaining it."

The intuitive nature must have been second nature for a creative who so expertly balances emotion with form and message. See more on her portfolio site at the Closer&Closer artist agency.