Old but Better, Studio obb — Making What You Love, Again and Again

Studio obb, a stationery brand that tears apart old books to print calendars on faded pages and turns cardboard boxes into hairpin-shaped bookmarks, gives new purpose to things that would otherwise be thrown away. We met Son Hyosuk, the founder of Studio obb, at her studio, where witty ideas and an eco-friendly concept come together in beautiful design.

Interviewee Son Hyosuk (Founder, Studio obb)
Interviewer Ryu Sunwoo

How did you get started with upcycling?
I originally worked as a product designer, mainly designing furniture. Every quarter, our lab would do a big cleanup, and each time, an enormous amount of waste came out — fabric samples, bulky prototypes, sketches, all of it piling up as high as the second floor of the building. Watching it take days and two 3-ton trucks just to haul it all away made me deeply doubt what I was doing. ‘What am I even doing? I feel like I just make pretty garbage.’ Still, I loved design too much to stop. Around that time, it was calendar season again. I’m not the type to casually reach out to people, so making a calendar once a year is my way of saying, ‘I really do care about you’ and ‘I think of you often.’ I wanted to weave that feeling into the calendar, so I looked for eco-friendly materials and old books caught my eye. I thought, why not overprint on the pages of a used book to make a calendar?

Did that old-book calendar eventually turn into the brand?
Exactly. I gave some to friends, and they said it was so good that I should try selling it. Half-joking, half-serious, I posted it on Instagram. After that, I started getting messages from all kinds of places, and once it landed in Almang Market, it sold far better than I expected. I was still working a full-time job then, so I’d run out during lunch breaks to ship packages, then come home after work and stamp things all night long. It was exhausting, but it was so much fun. I realized, people are actually buying what I make — people care about this more than I thought.

Trying to make eco-friendly choices probably comes with real-world constraints.
For example, I didn’t want to use plastic for shipping packaging, so I made envelopes out of magazines. But then the courier wouldn’t accept the package — apparently, if it’s not boxed, they won’t take responsibility for damage or compensation. So far, I’ve been sending things out on the condition that I’ll cover any issues myself, but I don’t know how sustainable that is for me. I avoid plastic to cut down on waste, but if the packaging is too flimsy and the product gets damaged, it ends up as waste anyway. And if I have to resend the item because of that, I start wondering whether it’s really eco-friendly at all.

That kind of experience must have changed your original thinking too.
When I started obb, I think I was a bit extreme about it. (Laughs) Honestly, I was so deeply into environmental issues at the time that even ‘recycled’ products felt like greenwashing to me. So I told myself, ‘I’m only doing upcycling, no matter what!’ But once I actually got into it, I kept running into my own limits. I’ve realized some compromises are necessary for usability, and I’m still figuring out how much recycled material to use. I’ve also come to accept that there are cases where you inevitably have to use materials that aren’t great for the environment.

I understand most of your products are handmade. Are there any structural limitations to running the studio this way?
Since upcycled products are hard to make with machines, everything ends up being handmade, and that makes mass production impossible — so the brand can’t really scale up. Honestly, that’s frustrating in some ways. Because so much is made by hand, when something sells well, I’m happy, but also kind of sad. Happy but sad. (Laughs) Since everything has to be done by hand, I end up stamping and making things nonstop, barely sleeping. For a brand to be sustainable, it needs a certain level of income, and I also need to not wear my body out. Thinking about that often puts the brakes on when I’m considering new products.

So what keeps you going despite all that?
Everyone asks me that. My friends say, ‘It’s amazing that you’ve kept at it this long!’ But honestly, I don’t think about it much. I’m just bad at quitting things. I keep going out of momentum, I guess. As long as it’s not so unbearable that I truly can’t stand it anymore, I keep going. Even when there are hard moments in between, I just think, ‘Well, that’s life,’ and move on. I don’t think I’ve been doing this because of some grand ambition or goal. It’s just fun, and somewhere along the way, it became part of my everyday life.

Is there anything you want to change compared to when you first started the brand?
I’m thinking about developing more products using recycled materials and keeping only some of the existing upcycled items as part of the brand’s identity. I’m cautious about it, though, since it could easily come across as greenwashing. We have a product called the Goal Tracker, stickers for recording your daily life. Since the adhesive side of most stickers is actually a plastic film, we made starch-adhesive stickers instead. After that, I became very cautious about using regular stickers in any other context — it felt contradictory to reject plastic film on one hand but then use ordinary stickers when packaging a product. When I started, I had certain ambitions, but I ended up facing all sorts of issues I hadn’t expected — in manufacturing, usability, durability, and more.

It must be quite difficult to satisfy everything at once.
Absolutely. Before, I think I compromised on design for the sake of environmental concerns. But for eco-friendly practices to be sustainable, they can’t be disconnected from the wider world. If it becomes ‘a league of its own,’ it loses its meaning. I’ve come to lean toward the idea that you should make something people resonate with, want to own and use, and embed the eco-friendly element within that. If you ask me whether rejecting everything that’s not good for the environment is actually effective, I don’t think it is.
People often think that if you can’t do something perfectly, you shouldn’t do it at all — and I think that mindset is especially strong when it comes to the environment. For example, if someone starts exercising for their health and only manages to work out three times a week, no one tells them they might as well not bother, or that they shouldn’t even mention that they exercise. But with eco-friendly activities, it seems like even the smallest gap isn’t tolerated. That standard of perfection gets applied both to people running brands and to consumers. It’s hard to find a reasonable middle ground that most people can agree with.

Looking at the objects around your studio, it seems like you have a distinctive eye for stationery and paper in general. Do you seek out stationery a lot when you travel too?
I love looking around, and honestly, I like buying a little too. (Laughs) Whenever I go abroad, I buy so much paper — postcards, memo pads, that sort of thing. I love it, but I also buy a lot for reference. As for food, once I’ve tried the most famous dish in a region, I don’t really mind what else I eat. Instead, I love wandering into small shops or cute little stores. Oh, and I really love browsing supermarkets too. I think supermarkets are where a culture really comes together — you can see exactly what people in that country eat and how they live. I even buy soap or toothpaste at my destination and try using them. These days, the world feels so closely connected. Even when you visit a fancy, pretty concept store, you’ve usually already seen it all online. I actually find places like the little stationery shop in front of an elementary school much more interesting. Want me to show you some things I brought back from my travels? (Laughs)

I saw a category called ‘World Stationery’ on your website, where you sell stationery you’ve picked up while traveling. I’d love to hear more about it.
These are things I bought last year while attending the Taipei Art Book Fair and the Kuala Lumpur Art Book Fair in Malaysia. Do you know about Taiwanese ancestral rites? When performing the rites, people burn paper money, gold bars, even paper luxury watches, believing that if their ancestors or the gods they honor in heaven receive them, it makes them happy. So they sell paper gold bars, paper iPhones, paper luxury wallets, paper watches, and more. Isn’t that adorable? Apparently, Taiwanese people also love prize draws — even at the smallest events, a prize draw is a must, so stationery shops even sell forms specifically for prize draws. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, really has such a mix of cultures. There’s a large ethnic Chinese population, so even daily calendars have English, Malay, and Chinese all printed together.

Is there a travel destination that stands out in your memory?
I really love Germany. I first went there as a college student, through a sister-school program that involved a collaborative project with friends from RWTH Aachen University. It wasn’t just travel—I made friends, attended classes together, and for a short while lived like a local. Germany was the first place that made me think I could actually live there. Later, when I went back with my husband, we visited Freiburg. I was curious about it because it’s known as an eco-friendly city. There’s a district called Vauban where the community runs on its own energy. Every house has solar panels on the roof, and I heard they even sell surplus energy to neighboring towns. In front of the communal housing there were small vegetable gardens and compost areas where plant waste was collected and turned into fertilizer. It was fascinating to see people actually living that way.

Is there anywhere you’d like to visit in the future?
I’d like to go to Chiang Mai. Thailand is a region that experiences a lot of extreme weather, so I understand there’s active discussion about environmental issues there. I even heard that some supermarkets use banana leaves instead of plastic for packaging. I’m curious to see how people actually live there, and I’d also love to see the lush nature.

Lastly, what does sustainability mean to Studio Obibi?
I hope Obibi becomes a brand that doesn’t score a perfect 100 with just one person or in just one area, but instead earns a solid 70 to 80 points across many people and many aspects. No matter how good the intentions behind a product are, people won’t want to buy it if it isn’t appealing. Even I don’t come across many products at zero-waste shops that I find attractive. They might score high on eco-friendliness, but when you factor in design and usability, the overall score ends up low. In the end, isn’t a product only meaningful if a lot of people actually use it? Catering to just a small group isn’t the direction Obibi wants to go. Growing into a brand that scores around 70 to 80 overall, even if it’s not a perfect 100 in the environmental category—maybe that’s a more realistic, and ultimately more sustainable, kind of eco-friendliness.

+ Where to Find Studio Obibi Products

- WW, Mangwon-dong
Address: 2F, 15 Poeun-ro 5-gil, Mapo-gu, Seoul
Instagram: ww.store.__

- Boan Bookshop, Seochon
Address: 2F, 33 Hyoja-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul
Instagram: boanbooks

- Bookshop Margo, Jeju
Address: 13 Sehwa 10-gil, Gujwa-eup, Jeju-si, Jeju
Instagram: margo.bookshop

- Island of Taste Book&Things, Seogwipo
Address: 2F, 66-7 Sokgol-ro, Seogwipo-si, Jeju, Island of Taste Book&Things
Instagram: chwihyang.books