In this blog post, I’ll focus on the lessons I learned and the insights I gained through my academic studies, club activities, and collaboration during high school.

Writing About My Academic Experience and Insights

I spent my high school years majoring in visual design at a high school specializing in life sciences. The curriculum focused primarily on graphic design and visual communication, and I learned about creating advertisements and visual compositions for conveying messages.
As specialized courses, I was able to take a variety of classes, including Form and Composition, Visual Design, Computer Graphics, Illustration, Sketching, and Product Design. Since I’ve always been very interested in design itself, I enjoyed taking these classes and tried to apply the fundamentals I learned in class to the broad field of design.
However, since the curriculum was centered on visual design, there were limitations to delving deeply into fashion design. I wanted to learn more about fashion, but I was disappointed that there were few fashion-related courses among the specialized subjects, so I decided to supplement my education through club activities.
Nevertheless, believing that the fundamentals of design as a whole are interconnected, I focused on the foundational courses. In particular, in the basic drawing class, I devoted a lot of time to practicing how to translate hand-drawn work into computer graphics. Through training that bridged analog sketching and digital work, I broadened my range of expression.
Whenever I was assigned creative projects, I always chose fashion design as my theme. Depicting the three-dimensionality of the human body and the flow of clothing held a unique appeal distinct from graphic or product design, and I set out to express these elements in a graphic format to create a cohesive work of art.
While my classmates diversified their topics—such as product design, advertising, and book design—I consistently focused on figure and garment sketching. By studying the harmony between straight lines and curves and seeking out lines and silhouettes that complemented the garments, I produced assignments that were recognized for their originality. By diligently completing this foundational curriculum, I was able to take my first steps toward fashion design.

Major Campus Activities and Reflections

Building on the foundation I established in my first year of high school through basic drawing and computer graphics, I joined a fashion apparel production club starting in the second semester of my freshman year. During the club’s founding process, I took a leading role in drafting the activity plan and managed operations by handling promotion and recruitment.
Although we started as a small group of about ten people, the joy of conversing with friends who shared the same interests quickly brought vitality to our activities. We set a goal to increase our membership to over twenty within a single semester, and we successfully established ourselves as a professional fashion club, even attracting upperclassmen.
The club was divided into three teams based on skills and interests. One team designed casual wear and ready-to-wear clothing, another focused on dresses and party wear, and the last specialized in sportswear. I served as the team leader of the dress and party wear team, spearheading creative planning and design.
I was drawn to dresses and party wear because they allow for maximum personal expression through elaborate embellishments, bold colors, and unique silhouettes. I found it appealing that I could exercise greater creativity than with ready-to-wear clothing while conceptualizing various styles, such as evening gowns, party dresses, and mini-dresses.
Our team consisted of four members, and we worked together on everything from conceptualizing designs to planning and prototyping. We were able to create the initial drafts relatively easily by gathering materials in the club room and referencing existing examples. When making prototypes, we first established the basic shapes using whatever fabric was available nearby.
To secure the necessary materials, we walked the streets of Dongdaemun and Namdaemun markets to personally select fabrics, and we used the fabric we sourced to create the actual garments. We displayed the finished pieces in the club room, photographed them, and used the photos as promotional materials for the club, which gave us a real sense of accomplishment.

Writing About Examples of Consideration, Sharing, and Cooperation, and My Reflections

As we entered our second year since the club’s founding, we solidified our individual creative worlds and built stronger bonds with one another. The three teams nurtured a dream of creating a single, cohesive program that highlighted each team’s unique characteristics, and we finally decided to plan a fashion show during the school festival.
The festival planning committee and the student council were supportive of our participation, and we refined our concepts by team to live up to their expectations. The ready-to-wear team prepared looks reflecting the latest trends, the sportswear team prepared swimwear made from rash guard fabric, and our dress team proposed a hanbok dress show as a unique experiment.
Creating dresses based on hanbok was a new challenge for us, as we had previously focused solely on Western-style dresses, and some even suggested it was too ambitious. Nevertheless, we agreed to showcase our unique artistic vision through designs that blended tradition and modernity.
The preparation process was carried out through thorough collaboration. We personally researched and sourced the fabrics and materials used in hanbok from the market, and exchanged opinions numerous times to incorporate the lines and functionality of traditional hanbok into modern silhouettes. In an atmosphere where no one’s opinion was taken lightly, everyone participated actively.
As the team leader, I struggled to strike a balance between artistic quality and consideration for my team members. While I was eager to produce a high-quality final product, I also believed that carefully listening to my team members’ opinions and feelings would lead to better collaboration, and I strove to put that into practice.
As a result, the hanbok dress our team created garnered significant attention at the fashion show and was met with applause. Through this experience, I became convinced that cooperation and consideration lead to better creative work, and I learned how to pool our individual strengths to achieve a common goal.