Danbee Kim, Chicago, IL (2026)

12/19/2022

Some photos from the People’s Unity Platform launch rally this past Saturday taken by Alex Santos featuring our coalition members + the artwork & visual branding I created 🎨

Community leaders of grassroots movements spoke out about each of the 6 demands of this coalition: Education, Housing, Climate, Violence Prevention, Public Health & Safety, and Worker’s Rights. Ongoing campaigns in these demands include , Treatment Not Trauma, Loving & Liberatory Schools, End Sacrifice Zones, , End the Gang Database, Invest in Peacebook, Reparations for Survivors of Police Torture, Rideshare Living Wage & Safety Ordinance ⚡️

You can stay connected with the coalition updates and upcoming events over at ❤️‍🔥

01/29/2021

Create With Yari—Equity Centered Community-Based Design ⠀
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Overjoyed to have worked on visual branding system with the incredible Yaritza Guillen and her first business! ⠀
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After years of doing equity work and community-based design, Yaritza is launching her official consultancy that will expand to different communities and organizations throughout Chicago. Yaritza values creating a bridge and an understanding between the designers, the built environment, nature, and BIPOC communities. She wants to ensure that we are creating environments that do not impose, but instead engage people to work across differences through building trust, countering historic and systemic disparities, and unifying residents to create a vision and positive change of their own definition.⠀
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Want to learn more about Yaritza’s work? Head over to and her newest website home, www.yaritzaguillen.com

08/28/2020

A lil preview of final brand style guidelines as we wrap up our work together next week. A lot of my clients end up creating ongoing marketing materials themselves, typically on Canva or Adobe Illustrator/Indesign. This is where the education piece comes in. The guidelines are filled with tips on how to use your logos, color palette, icons, fonts. Video recorded tutorials going over design templates are also included to give guidance as you play around with your new visual identity! Branding can feel like an intimidating investment, even if you’ve been in business for a while. I want to make sure my clients feel they’ve truly gained back when they’ve put in. ⠀
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ID: Text reads: Trauma-Informed NVC Best Practices & Usage / Photo and Palette Pairings. Image of glass jar of flowers on wood stool on soft cream background. Image of dark blue ocean and frothy waves on sky blue background. Image of glass bowl of peaches on pale pink background.

08/25/2020

A few outtakes from a nourishing brand experience we are wrapping up this week 💐 Tamil flowers, sacred snakes, and sweet stamps weave into this business and founder’s visual story. Although it’s a primarily digital brand, I couldn’t resist playing with some physical mockups with these tags! More to come soon.

08/21/2020

Coming Soon: Excited to unveil this latest collaboration with Project Nia and Jennifer Viets, with illustrations by . Launching next month! ⠀
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[ID] First slide: Photo of a page from “Talking Circles at Home and Parenting Restoratively” resource toolkit on a stool. Second slide: Cover of toolkit featuring illustrations of a teddy bear, letter writing, and autumn scene with falling leaves. Text reads “Talking Circles at Home and Parenting Restoratively: By Jennifer Viets.” @ Chicago, Illinois

07/23/2020

From the Design Day archives — custom illustration and branded Canva templates for Liberated Together’s Asian American women cohort series that launched in June. We wrapped up the day with 20 Facebook/Instagram graphic templates + 22 presentation slides. Congrats to for launching the second cohort of this series and preparing for another in the near future! Swipe for her testimonial on our work together. ⠀
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Design Day is an offering I recently began sharing with returning clients and new clients who have an existing visual identity but need ongoing collateral or want to freshen things up. I devote an entire day to designing for clients’ brands with a built-in feedback window and guaranteed file delivery by end of day/following morning. It’s been a fun way to meet specific design needs without the fuss of elaborate project timelines. Thanks for presenting on Design Days last year. Follow her for thoughtful freelance design advice!

07/21/2020

Some notes on what’s been giving me pleasure in my business lately🌿: ⠀
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01. Boundaries. Saying no to things not in my genius zone in order to say yes to what is. Saying no to good to make room for the best. Also understanding that different seasons invites changing boundaries.⠀
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02. Structure and systems. Admiring carefully crafted grids and routines—and, at times, the thrill of breaking out of them. Structure of beautifully kerned typography, of rituals that allow for meaningful connection to others. ⠀
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03. Reflection. Lack of remembrance robs me of pleasure. I’m taking care to spend time with moments and relationships that brought me to where I am today. Gratitude is central to pleasure because without it, there rarely seems to be an “enough.”⠀
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Also important to note that I don’t receive pleasure just from work, that I am not my business. My business and I are partners, and it helps support the life and values I want to embody (gems of wisdom gleaned from .is - thank you!)
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07/14/2020

BIUM is a Korean word that means emptiness. This concept is important to me in my work as a designer. When I present designs to clients, sometimes I share about the importance of empty space. I believe visual design is much about what you fill a space and…what you deliberately, intentionally choose NOT to fill in a space. Bium {비움} is not passive. It’s very much active and has its own powerful voice—in both visual design and more. Depending on the context, it can be loud or quiet, stimulating or pacifying.⠀
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Architect Byoungsoo Cho speaks of the “poignant vacancy” of bium. I love how this value translates into the moon jar, which I’ve currently been enjoying creating a personal project around for my own creative self-care. The moon jar is all about embracing the bium of its curvy shape, resisting the impulse to fill and cover it. ⠀
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Bium also insists on examining and re-examining what I’m filling in my lie—and what areas I’m choosing not to fill so that I can be open to what is outside my carefully crafted plans. ⠀
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What words have you been implementing into your creative work or life these days?

07/06/2020

Cooking up a custom Canva template collection for the kind, creative soul Yolanda Chioma, an event and portrait photographer based in Chicago. We started our work together earlier this year, in February. The way she bakes her values through her work and highlights the beauty and humanity of her clients remind me of why I got into my creative business in the first place. The following images feature portraits from Yolanda’s “Portrait Narratives in Black Form” series.

Danbee Kim

12/19/2022

01/29/2021

08/28/2020

08/25/2020

08/21/2020

07/23/2020

07/21/2020

07/14/2020

07/06/2020

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