BRAND STRATEGY · VERBAL IDENTITY · EXPERIENCE DESIGN

I turn complex ideas into brands people can understand, remember, and choose.

I work across research, positioning, naming, messaging, creative direction, and customer experience. My practice connects strategic thinking with language, visual systems, products, services, and commercial execution.

Name
Daeyoung “Ob” Lee
Location
Seoul, South Korea
Availability
Available for freelance, part-time, remote, and project-based work
View selected work Email me Selected visual work on Dribbble

Positioning

Strategy should survive contact with reality.

I do not treat brand strategy as a presentation layer placed on top of a business. I examine how the business works, what customers hesitate over, which cultural meanings already exist, and what the organisation can credibly deliver. I then translate those findings into positioning, language, identity, and experience.

  1. 01Research before expression
  2. 02Language before decoration
  3. 03Experience before claims
  4. 04Commercial evidence after launch

Selected work

Selected Brand Work

Projects where strategy, language, visual direction, customer experience, and commercial execution were developed as one system.

01

Monthly Hansu

Reframing dining as recurring cultural content.

Monthly Hansu plated dish showing the dining experience as an editorial compositionMonthly Hansu seasonal dish served in a patterned ceramic bowlMonthly Hansu ingredient story connecting seaweed provenance to the menu

Monthly Hansu began with a question: could a dining experience build continuity and fandom rather than disappear after a single meal?

As Co-founder and Creative Director, I helped reposition dining from a one-off restaurant transaction into a recurring format combining food, narrative, service, and community. Each event was treated as an episode within a larger world, giving customers a reason to return for new interpretations rather than repeat the same menu.

Dining as a repeatable cultural format, not only a meal.

Role
Co-founder · Brand Strategy · Creative Direction · Experience Design · Operations
Key outputs
  • Brand positioning
  • Experience format
  • Event narrative
  • Service structure
  • Customer communication
  • Content direction
  • Revenue model
Outcome
  • Sold out for 3 consecutive months
  • 10% operating margin
View Monthly Hansu project archive
02

MREL

Turning lighting technology into a brand for deep focus.

MREL began with a short-wavelength LED technology developed for task lighting. Rather than presenting it as another functional lighting product, I translated the technology into a broader proposition: a tool that protects the user’s capacity for immersion.

The strategy connected engineering, language, visual identity, packaging, and interaction around 3 principles: verticality, depth, and restraint.

MREL stands for Meticulous Refinement for Engaged Labor.

For those who strive, focus on what matters.
Role
Brand Strategy · Naming · Verbal Identity · Brand Direction
Key outputs
  • Brand proposition
  • Naming system
  • Brand narrative
  • Messaging
  • Design principles
  • Visual identity
  • Packaging direction
  • Product communication
Outcome
  • Selected for a KRW 5 million government-funded programme
  • Working prototype completed
View MREL project archive
03

Bulyang Kitty Circle

Building a commercially viable fashion brand with an inventory-light hybrid model.

Bulyang Kitty Circle combined a deliberately kitsch visual identity with AI-assisted graphics, offline community sales, and an inventory-light hybrid fulfilment model.

The project tested whether a distinctive aesthetic could move beyond attention and create measurable demand. Brand, merchandising, production, and distribution were designed as one operating system rather than separate activities.

Role
Co-founder · Growth & Operations · Brand Development
Key outputs
  • Brand concept
  • Visual language
  • Merchandise system
  • Sales experience
  • Offline activation
  • Production workflow
  • Distribution model
Outcome
  • KRW 10 million in monthly revenue
  • Sold out at offline markets
  • 0% inventory disposal rate
View Bulyang Kitty Circle project archive

Capabilities

What I Work On

01

Research & Positioning

Audience research, competitive context, cultural insight, category framing, business model analysis, customer hesitation, and brand positioning.

02

Verbal Identity

Naming, brand narrative, messaging frameworks, taglines, tone of voice, UX writing, product language, and campaign copy.

03

Brand Experience

Connecting strategy to products, services, digital touchpoints, editorial systems, physical environments, and customer journeys.

04

Commercial Validation

Testing whether the brand idea creates attention, demand, conversion, retention, operational value, or repeat behaviour.

Working method

From ambiguity to a usable brand system

  1. 01

    Investigate

    Understand the business, audience, category, culture, and constraints.

  2. 02

    Define

    Establish the central problem, positioning, audience, and strategic idea.

  3. 03

    Express

    Translate the strategy into language, naming, narrative, and identity principles.

  4. 04

    Apply

    Extend the idea across products, services, communications, and customer experiences.

  5. 05

    Validate

    Observe how the brand performs commercially and behaviourally.

Writing & thinking

Selected Writing

The Next Bottleneck Is UX Link forthcoming

An essay on why generative interfaces have improved faster than the systems required to evaluate real user experience.

From 27% to 85%

A case study on improving a customer-service chatbot by routing risk before generating an answer.

So, What Is KYUL? Link forthcoming

A founder’s explanation of a blind matching service designed around trust, pacing, and gradual disclosure.

Selected visual work

Visual practice

My visual work includes identity systems, editorial design, typography, posters, book covers, and speculative graphic systems.

View selected visual work on Dribbble

HAND-AXE / Brand

A brand is not a layer placed on top of a business.

It is the system through which a business decides what it means, how it behaves, what it says, and why people should care.

Start a conversation View all HAND-AXE work View Dribbble

daepop98@gmail.com
Seoul, South Korea
Freelance · Part-time · Remote · Project-based