Extra Flavor for Stories — The Umami-Spiked Tales of Design Studio Pikant

Extra Flavor For Stories — The Umami-Spiked Tales of Design Studio Pikant

Pikant, the German adjective meaning ‘spicy and tangy.’ The two designers add a dash of umami to the stories that captivate them, crafting works brimming with flavor. Where does the story that draws in their hearts end?

Interviewee Pikant
Interviewer Ryu Sunwoo
Photos Kim Yoonkyung
* A design studio led by designers Song Minseon and Choi Jungwon. Having completed their studies in Berlin and Hamburg, Germany, they are now based in Seoul. They work on a variety of projects across media including posters, books, branding, animation, and motion graphics.

It’s been five years since ‘Life in Germany in Four-Panel Comics’ was featured in Pitch by Magazine. What was it like when you first got a call from our editor while you were in Germany?
Joongwon It was the first time we’d been contacted by a magazine, so we were surprised they even knew about us, and since it was just a casual comic we’d drawn, we wondered whether it would even be interesting enough to be featured somewhere like that.
Minseon That was the first time we’d seen Pitch by Magazine. I don’t read many travel magazines, but it felt so different from typical magazines that even we found it interesting. We were like, ‘Wow, they’re actually going to publish our comic!’ (laughs)

It’s been a while since you returned to Seoul after finishing your studies in Germany. Did you naturally come back to Korea once your studies ended, or was staying in Germany ever an option?
Joongwon Studying in Germany was so enjoyable, but by the time we finished our master’s degrees, we started thinking we needed to start earning money.
Minseon Enjoying yourself while studying and actually working are two different things. We’d both been working in Korea before we went abroad to study, so everyone we knew was in Korea, and to work in Germany we would’ve had to build a network from scratch — and on top of that, COVID hit right around when we were graduating. So deciding to come back wasn’t all that difficult. We hadn’t gone to Germany in the first place with some grand goal of building a life there. There are people around us who moved to Germany thinking, ‘Germany is so much better than Korea, I’m going to live here forever,’ but that wasn’t us either. I first became interested in the German language and started learning it, and studying was just one way to stay in Germany, so in a way, it was a lighter kind of decision.

Was there a special reason you became interested in German?
Minseon When I was working at a cultural space called Sumdo, we hosted an exhibition by an artist who had studied in Germany. There was a video in the exhibition, and the German spoken in it just sounded so good to me. I thought I’d like to try learning it, so I took a general elective class at university. After that, I wanted to learn more, and figured it would be great to go to Germany and actually use it. That’s when I started attending a German language institute — and at the time, Joongwon had no idea what was coming… (laughs)
Joongwon A lot of people ask me, ‘Why did you go to Germany?’ and I always hand the mic over to her (Minseon). I feel like I just followed along. I’d vaguely wanted to study abroad myself, but I never imagined it would be Germany. Back then, before we got married, Minseon suddenly told me she wanted to study in Germany. I wasn’t into the idea of a long-distance relationship, so I thought, why not try learning German myself too — and that’s how it started.

Does your life in Germany still linger in your daily life or the way you think today?
Joongwon Germany and Korea move at different paces. Germany is slow, and Korea is really fast. When we first decided to come back to Korea, I thought it might take time to readjust, but before long I was living at a fast pace again. (laughs) We’ve chosen Korea and we live this busy life, but it’s comforting just to know that somewhere out there, people are living at a different pace, and that if we ever wanted to (though probably not anytime soon), that option exists for us too.
Minseon On the other hand, I think it’s nice that the German way of life lets us think about things we never would have noticed if we’d only ever been in Korea — like the culture of consideration for the elderly, people with disabilities, and strollers. If you take public transportation in Germany, you see a huge number of wheelchairs and strollers. Germany’s party culture is also a good memory for me. It was fun how people would invite friends of friends, or even strangers, over for a party. After coming back to Korea, we sometimes threw parties the way we used to in Germany.
I think it’s had an influence on us in many ways. It wasn’t intentional, but if you look at the books we’ve made, a lot of them involve Germany in some way. ‘Ein Mal Stollen, Bitte’ (which means ‘One stollen, please’ in German) is a story about Christmas in Berlin, Germany, and the same goes for our recent book ‘The Railway and I.’ Trains in Germany are delayed extremely often. We have an acquaintance living in Germany who graduated from art school and has continued building a career as an artist. She rides trains often and kept posting about the delays on Instagram, so we compiled three years’ worth of her delay stories into a book.

Did you suggest making it into a book first?
Minseon Yes, we’d been watching her posts on Instagram for a while and thought it would be fun to turn them into a book, so we brought it up, and she happily agreed.
Joongwon Working on books like this is partly about showing that ‘Pikant can do this too,’ but it’s also partly our own ambition. I guess you could call it a sense of self-fulfillment — there’s some of that in it too.

Running a design studio is something you do because you love it, but it’s also how you make a living. Knowing how hard it is to work on personal projects alongside client work, I’ve always been amazed watching you two. I keep thinking, ‘How on earth do they manage it?’
Joongwon By giving up a lot of other things… (laughs)
Minseon When you do client work, some of it is fun, of course, but there’s always this feeling of wanting to try something even more interesting. And we think that unless we show that kind of work ourselves, people won’t know, ‘Ah, Pikant is interested in this kind of thing,’ or ‘We could work together on something like this.’ So in a way, half of it is also about sustaining our livelihood. That’s why we try to make it happen no matter what. If anything, I feel like there’s so little time that there are things we want to do but can’t.
Joongwon I think it would actually be harder if we only did our main work. When we have to do work that isn’t fun, we somehow carve out time to take on something fun instead. I think doing that is what gets us closer to the ideal studio we imagine for ourselves.

As a designer, is there a particular kind of work or field you’re especially interested in?
Jungwon I think we both just like books, fundamentally. If part of the appeal of design—part of what makes the work fun—is finding some way to deliver what a client wants within a set of constraints, then making a book is really just one constraint after another. Sometimes it’s about time or money, sometimes about ability. Working within all of that, building something from start to finish with our own hands, is what makes making books fun for us. We also think a lot about how to make a book that people will actually like, that will catch their interest. That’s part of why we took part in Unlimited Edition too—it’s a place where we can show the books we’ve made.
Last year, during the protests around the presidential impeachment, we built a website (Flaaags.com) archiving the protest flags, and personally, that was a pretty interesting and meaningful project. Far more time went into going out into the field, reaching out to people, and sorting and organizing all the material we collected than into the actual design. If the whole project took up ten units of time, design probably accounted for about one. In terms of time and labor, design’s share was actually quite small, but looking at the project as a whole—planning the site, building the content, designing it—I still felt like I was doing my job as a designer. I guess what I mean is, even when flashy design isn’t front and center, I keep thinking about what we could make just by using the skills we have.
Minsun I think we’re less interested in making something that looks visually impressive through great design, and more interested in the subject or story we want to tell. Since we happen to know how to design, that just makes it a little easier for us to figure out how to present it.

Hearing you talk about this makes me understand Picant’s past work a bit better. Is there a particular subject or theme you’re especially drawn to?
Jungwon Honestly, it really jumps all over the place…
Minsun Broadly speaking, we both love novels and literature. That’s why we make books, and why we held an exhibition called “Stories That Travel” (held at Prosceniumm, a café in Namhae, and Seogan, a bonsai studio in Seochon, Seoul. Words and sentences excerpted from various books were woven together into seven books for the exhibition). Beyond that, we have a lot of smaller interests, and travel is one of them.
Jungwon Since we’re teaching classes and running the studio, we can’t travel as freely as we used to, so if I’m being greedy, I’d love to have some excuse to travel for work…
Minsun It would be nice to have a reason. (Laughs)
Jungwon I keep thinking it’d be great to travel half for work, half for pleasure.

Do you each take on different roles when you work?
Minsun It depends on the job—sometimes one of us does more, and sometimes one person handles an entire project on their own. When the scale of the work is bigger, we split things up along the way.
Jungwon Usually, whoever’s proposed sketch gets chosen early in a project ends up taking the lead role on it. Separately from that, since Minsun draws far better than I do, and I can handle video, we split things up that way. For example, when we’re doing motion work for an animation, Minsun mainly draws, and I make it move.

You’ve worked together for a long time, from Toasted Page—the design studio you ran together before studying in Germany—up to now. As both spouses and business partners, what are the pros and cons of working together?
Jungwon The upside is extreme efficiency.
Minsun Right. Since we’re together all the time, we don’t have to make decisions sitting at a meeting table—we can do it on the bus, or while walking around…
Jungwon Over dinner, over drinks, lying in bed before falling asleep—we can share ideas or talk about the direction of a project anytime, and I think that’s a real plus.
Minsun Working this way for so long means communication basically costs us nothing. That’s great, but on the other hand, when we work with other people, we need to actually organize things properly.
Jungwon We’ve never really had to unpack and document all the conversations we’ve had over the years, so now that we’re running a studio, I feel like we’re in a bit of a transitional period. As for downsides, I suppose we probably clash more often? But having worked together for so long, we’ve built up enough experience to just think, ‘there they go again,’ and move on. In the end we each find our own way through it, so I think we’re working happily. Another thing that’s both a pro and a con is that we went to the same school, our circles overlap, so we share a lot. Hmm, that’s not really a con, more like…
Minsun A characteristic. Our boundaries are basically identical.
Jungwon So even when I ask, ‘got any interesting stories?’ it’s hard for either of us to come up with something new for the other. (Laughs)

Besides your main work, you’re involved in all kinds of activities—publishing, exhibitions, writing groups. Are you both really into writing?
Minsun Jungwon is a bit more into it than I am…
Jungwon I loved Haruki Murakami when I was young. In the author’s note for ‘Norwegian Wood,’ there’s a line that says, “The first part of this novel was written in Greece, the middle in Sicily, the latter part in Rome.” Reading that, I thought, ‘wow, that’s so cool…’ (Laughs) It made such an impression on me that writing became this vague childhood dream of mine. Once I got older, I realized I didn’t necessarily need to formally debut as a writer to write. No one’s going to say anything if we make our own book with our own money, and since we can design it ourselves, the design costs nothing. (Laughs) To add a bit more about ‘Einmal Stollen, Bitte’—in Germany, Christmas is a season of giving lots of gifts, so bookstores put out tons of Christmas-themed books. There aren’t many Christmas-related books in Korea, so we thought, ‘this is it, let’s make some money off this!’ and that’s how the book came about. The project folder name while we were working on it was literally ‘Christmas Cash Grab.’
Minsun Before we went to Germany, that wasn’t really a thing, but by the time we came back, stollen had become incredibly popular.
Jungwon Seeing that, we decided we absolutely needed a story with stollen in it, and put it right in the title too.
Minsun We made it with some very ambitious dreams… (Laughs) But when I checked recently, there’s almost no stock left, thankfully.
Jungwon The Christmas before last, we did a collaboration with a bakery and sold it that way, but last year we didn’t manage to do anything. This Christmas, we’re thinking we’ll sell out completely.

I actually really enjoyed reading ‘Einmal Stollen, Bitte.’ It’s a short story collection—did you each write your own stories and put them together?
MinsunThat’s how it started, but since neither of us is a full-time writer, we each wrote in Notion, edited each other’s writing, and sometimes continued each other’s stories.
Jungwon When one of us got stuck, we’d say, ‘want to try writing some?’ So there are stories with a stronger individual flavor, depending on who started it or who wrote more of it. I mostly wrote the first three stories, including ‘The Secret of the Pit.’
Minsun I wrote almost all of ‘Stowaway’ and ‘Tea Time,’ which come later in the book, but everyone seems to really love ‘The Secret of the Pit.’
Jungwon I think it’s because it’s a cute animal story. Overall, Minsun tends to write in a much drier style, so in a lot of cases her edits ended up improving things.

I’m curious whether you both naturally like starting fun projects, or if it’s something that only happens because you’re together.
Jungwon Maybe it comes down to how we split roles? Minsun likes making plans.
Minsun I’m the one who first says, ‘let’s do this.’ But then I don’t actually follow through…
Jungwon And I’m the one who jumps in and just does it. (Laughs) Then afterward, Minsun ends up handling a lot of the cleanup.

Last year and the year before, you held travel-themed exhibitions in Namhae and Seoul. We're curious how this project got started.
Minsun One of our acquaintances who had moved to Namhae was opening a café and suggested we do an exhibition there. At first we thought, ‘What kind of exhibition could we suddenly put on in Namhae?’ But since we're both very interested in stories and books, and going to Namhae itself felt like a kind of trip for us, we decided to connect these elements. We started with the idea of ‘making something that lets stories travel.’
Jungwon We had a lot of candidate ideas, and when we picked them out, they all turned out to be about text. Coincidentally, we didn't have much work for about a month, so we spent a lot of time on it. Since Namhae isn't exactly close, we went once to install the exhibition and hold the opening, and once more to take it down. It was a bit of a shame that our friends couldn't easily go see it. Then we happened to discover a space called Seogan in Seochon, so early last year we held another exhibition in Seoul.
Minsun Thanks to that, we ended up making a book out of what we exhibited at the last Unlimited Edition.

Since we're on the topic of travel, let's continue. Where was the most recent place you traveled to?
Minsun We went to Japan for the Tokyo Art Book Fair, and while we were there we traveled to a town near Tokyo called Fujiyoshida. It was more fun than I expected. I have a friend who runs a design company in Fujiyoshida. They also run a town festival themed around local specialties.
Jungwon Fujiyoshida has declined now, but apparently it used to be a producer of high-end textiles. In connection with the town, they've been holding an event called ‘Fuji Textile Week’ for the fourth time now.
Minsun The view of Mt. Fuji from this town is quite famous. It's also where the Netflix drama ‘Hot Spot’ was filmed, and it had become a place where everyone just came to take a photo of Mt. Fuji and leave. They started this event because that felt like a shame. The townspeople themselves act as docents. Unfortunately we didn't visit during the festival period, but since my friend is practically a town elder, we got to hear a lot of stories about the town and visit a lot of good restaurants thanks to him.

As people get older, or as travel experience builds up, preferred travel styles and tastes can change. What's your travel style like these days?
Minsun Before this Tokyo trip, we were so busy that we went without deciding anything. All I had was the thought, ‘I want to go to izakayas,’ so I asked ChatGPT, “I'm going to visit a lot of izakayas, which neighborhood should I go to?” It recommended Monzen-Nakacho, so we booked our lodging there.
Jungwon It turned out to really be a neighborhood with an izakaya street that a lot of locals go to.
Minsun It was the first time we stayed in an unfamiliar neighborhood with no information at all, and wandering the streets, just walking into whatever izakaya we found, traveling without a plan was more fun than I expected.
Jungwon We found one izakaya we really liked and even went back a second time. It was tucked at the end of an alley, an old place that didn't look popular and that young people probably wouldn't usually go to. It only had a handwritten Japanese menu, so it was even hard to read.
Minsun When I asked in my broken Japanese, “Do you have anything warm?” all the other customers inside thought about it together to help us.
Jungwon They'd point to what they were eating and say ‘this is delicious’ or ‘try this,’ and when we ordered it, it was so good. When we went back the next day, the owner recognized us too. (laughs)

Do you usually plan everything out ahead of time?
Minsun Yes, I'm the type who plans quite a lot.
Jungwon Normally Minsun is in charge of planning, but for this trip I said I'd do it…
Minsun He didn't plan a single thing. (laughs)

Is there something you consider most important when planning a trip?
Jungwon For us, it's usually food. Accommodation can be a bit cheaper, that's fine.
Minsun If a region has an unusual dish, we try to eat it. We were like that when we lived in Germany too.
Jungwon It turns out we're people who can basically eat anything well. (laughs)

Have you been back to Germany since returning to Korea?
Jungwon We've gone twice, actually.
Minsun One time was because flights were really cheap, and another time was because an Airbnb that some acquaintance's family had rented suddenly became vacant.
Jungwon It was funny that time too, because we had a lot of work at the time.
Minsun We went and worked without adjusting to the time difference at all.
Jungwon Waking up while it was still dark, having breakfast, drinking during the day, then sleeping, that kind of feeling. I remember we took a whole week to very slowly adjust to the time difference. We worked a lot and watched ‘Fullmetal Alchemist.’ (laughs)

What's it like going back to a place you used to live?
Jungwon It was strange. I really loved our place in Hamburg and had such a good time living there that I went all the way back to stand in front of our old apartment. I walked the same paths we used to walk every day too, and it felt odd. It's not that I have regrets, but it made me feel a bit sentimental. That piece I mentioned earlier, ‘Secret of the Pit,’ is actually something I wrote while thinking about our Hamburg apartment.

Tell us something you're proud of from this past year.
Minsun Working hard to make books for Unlimited Edition stands out most in my memory. It was incredibly hard, but thanks to that we finished all the books we had only been thinking about making.
Jungwon For me too, participating in Unlimited Edition was probably the thing I'm proudest of. I'm glad both of the books we had planned came out. What else is worth bragging about... The writing group we're part of has been really enjoyable. Running the studio well is also something I'm somewhat proud of.

If you have a secret project planned for this year, give us a little hint.
Minsun We're preparing a New Year's card featuring the ghost cat and skull bird characters from a postcard we made a while back. Technically it should have been ready for January 1st, but we didn't have time, so we're making it in time for Lunar New Year instead.
Jungwon The New Year's card is kind of our secret project. Designers usually make New Year's cards themed around that year's zodiac animal.
Minsun  Since there are already so many pretty ones out there, we thought we'd try something else fun instead. We've made web-based New Year's cards about twice before, but we couldn't last year because we were too busy. We want to do it properly this time.
Jungwon We're making it as an online interactive piece so it can reach more people. It's also something we're good at.
Minsun Other than that, our goal this year is to bring a new book to Unlimited Edition.

Lastly, do you have any plans to restart the four-panel comic series on the ‘would it be okay’ Instagram account?
Jungwon Honestly, we've thought a lot about that too. We even considered giving it a proper farewell and ending it completely.
Minsun Since we did it for so long, there was a sense of regret, so we thought about posting travel stories or stories about Korea. But once we actually came back, our daily life is mostly just work, so it seemed like work-related stories would inevitably creep in, which made us hesitate a bit.
Jungwon At one point we switched to animal characters because we wanted some distance from our real selves, but that has its limits too. So after thinking it over…
Minsun We just left it alone. (laughs) You never know though. If we suddenly move to Germany again, it could be an open ending that picks back up.