Na Kim

Recently I read a piece in the Opinion section of The New York Times about the rise of violence against Asian Americans, and stopped to admire this striking image accompanying it.

The blurry composite of portraits of a diverse selection of Asian people is not only beautiful on its own, but it perfectly fits the article’s central question about the uncertainty, the lack of clarity, about what is behind the increase.

The illustration credit said “Na Kim”, so I decided to do a little art research after I finished reading the article.

Here is my report:

Kim is an illustrator at Farrar, Straus and Giroux where she works in what might be considered the "dream team" of book cover designers.

She was born in Seoul, South Korea and grew up shuttling back and forth between her birth country and the United States.

It was a stressful existence that led to trouble at home and, eventually to art school.

In an interview in Print magazine, Kim said that her parents were like most Korean parents in that they strongly encouraged studying the arts in school, but were deeply suspicious of trying to make a career in it.

A painterly aunt encouraged Kim and she eventually went to art school with the ambition to be a fine artist.

After graduation, gainful employment was needed and Kim turned to illustration. Her first jobs were for a book publishing house called Bloomsbury and for The New York Times doing Op-Ed illustrations.

At some point she met Charlotte Strick, a highly-successful art director at FSG, and with a new role model in place, Kim committed to book design.

Kim and book illustration are perfect for each other. Reading is one of her favorite pastimes and she says she feels very privileged to work with FSG's authors in bringing their work to readers.

Her process varies. She has no strict set of rules for how to approach any given assignment.

As a designer she keeps her antennae up when reading, to get ideas. And then follows through with lots of research (for typefaces) but few sketches (for imagery). She says she likes to try one illustration at a time, to see where it takes her.

Kim’s most-recent cover for FSG is a book called Fulfillment, an Upton Sinclair-like story about the economic effects that Amazon is having on towns and cities across the United States, and "what it means to win and lose in one-click America.”

You can see Kim's Op-Ed images here …

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/06/opinion/asian-american-violence-race.html

And the Print magazine interview here …

https://www.printmag.com/post/best-book-cover-of-the-month-the-copenhagen-trilogy-designed-by-na-kim