It is irregular for illustrators to work alongside research and development industries, such as public health and finance. Sena Kwon is a full-time illustrator and designer for a company specializing in financial media and event management. She also serves the freelancing society with research and data projects. With her forte rooted in data visualization and infographics, she actively reaches the community through social design projects and statistical graphics.
An Artistic Education
Since her youth, Sena has been fascinated with fine arts. She frequently visited museums, galleries, and theaters, which are exceptional environments for exploring new cultures and learning languages. She sometimes sketched designs on paper on a side bench to symbolize her future career.
To pursue her graphic design aspirations, Kwon enrolled at Kyunghee University in South Korea, specializing in data visualization, infographics, and presentation design. Over in the United States, she earned her MFA in the Illustration Practice Program with a concentration in Art History at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.
One of Sena’s most significant learning experiences at MICA was when she took social design classes, which opened her eyes to using her creative talent to design progressive campaigns and community activities. After graduating, although she was not suitable for fast-paced editorial gigs, she built a vast network of school clients for freelance work.
Shaping the Research-Driven Sector
Sena strives to be professional and kind to people while learning the intricacies of software and business systems. She continually motivates herself to learn new platforms, such as the data visualization program called “Flourish,” and computer languages, like HTML and CSS. As an illustrator, she extends her scope beyond her personal projects to work with clients in diversified fields.
Kwon’s designs have reached audiences spanning numerous fields. She published a zine called “Flip, Flop, Tick, Tock,” a two-color risograph about a diary representing an illustrator’s year. Her zine won first place in the Special Format category at the MoCCA Arts Festival 2020.
Sena collaborated with Susan Carey, an American psychologist and professor in the Harvard Psychology Department, to produce two mind-stimulating games for children from 2020 to 2021. She designed scenes, characters, and animations to advance each game’s flow.
One of her milestone achievements was working on a social design project for the Baltimore City Health Department from 2020 to 2021. She designed brochures about sexually transmitted infections, spotlighting accurate information about the infections and encouraging patients to push past stigmas and carry on. Sena thoroughly communicated with medical experts to capture the meaning of her illustration.
Besides producing professional designs, Sena taught graphic design, design research, and illustration for the Undergraduate Communication Design branch at Pratt Institute from 2021 to 2022. Her mission was to model the path to creating an insightful design in the research field for junior designers. She mentored them on target audiences, methodology, information scope, and conceptualization for their projects.
