Flowers

Flowers is a series of computational graphic artworks crossing the boundaries of faith, illustration, computer science, and typography. It is inspired by a piece of Korean Contemporary Christian music, 꽃들도, MEBIG’s “Even flowers,” which I heard while attending the KOSTA (Korean Missional Diaspora for the Kingdom of God) USA conference in 2019. It ends: The sky opens on that day/Everyone will see/Finally the flowers bloom/The Lord of Glory will come (그날에 하늘이 열리고/모든 이가보게 되리라/마침내 꽃들이 피고/영광의 주가 오시리라). It showcases how to transform a series of  computational illustrations into generative typography. It explores new visual communication being legible, illustrative, and narrative typography in computational visualization. It is a transdisciplinary graphic design from generative typography to generative selfies to suggest how the traditional mediums would be extensible for self-portrait photographs by using computer vision. It invites the audience to experience physical interaction with illustration by using a web camera. 

Ahn received the SEGD’s Design Educator’s Award in 2022, the Juror’s Choice Award at IDEAS in 2015, and the Graduate Fellowship from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2009. Her projects have been featured in the Washington Post, PRINT, New York Times Magazine, Letter Arts Review, Creator’s Project, Designboom.com, and more, and published in Graphic Design: The New Basics by Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips and Type on Screen by Ellen Lupton from Princeton Architectural Press and Data-Driven Graphic Design by Andrew Richardson from Fairchild Books. Her work has been included in research papers from Leonardo, Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA) London, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) VIS Arts Program. Her research has been presented to international organizations for the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA), American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), Society for Experiential Graphic Designs (SEGD), Atypi, TypeCon, and more. She has also been invited as a speaker and exhibitor at worldwide conferences, including SIGGRAPH, ISEA, etc. Ahn holds an MFA in Graphic Design with a specialization in Interactive Media from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, an MFA in Information Design with specialization in Graphic Art from Ewha Woman’s University, Seoul, South Korea, and a BS in Computer Science from Chungbuk National University, Cheongju, South Korea. She serves as a committee member for the College Art Association (CAA) Annual Conference and Academic Task Force at the Society of Experiential Graphic Design (SEGD). She has worked as a freelance graphic artist for New York Times Magazine and taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago State University, and Valparaiso University. Currently, Ahn is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design and Interaction Design in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.