At WorkWith:Suin

I worked at HITCH from my early to mid-thirties. I consider those important years in my life, and they were the years when I enjoyed my work most and felt proudest as a designer. I was very grateful for that ‘Last Dance’ post.

It wasn’t the mechanical work of producing whatever layout a company requested and handing it over. I experienced the whole process: selling products I had designed, seeing the results and watching people take an interest. We started very small and grew into something quite substantial by my standards. Design played a clear part in that. I remember that last day so fondly that I wanted to leave a record of the time we spent together.

I used to think a designer was simply someone who designs. As AI developed so quickly, making visuals alone became less appealing to me. Now I think a designer is someone who builds a brand. You go beyond producing a proposal and stay with the work through to the final sale. That is my definition of a designer.

Exactly. If a designer stops at the visual result, I think that is closer to being an artist. To me, becoming a designer means seeing the process through until an actual sale happens.

My time at HITCH was the biggest turning point. I saw my designs sell, and I experienced people’s responses turning into revenue. That was exhilarating. Having seen sales both before and after the rebranding changed my perspective as a designer completely.

It was a small neighbourhood roastery, a café with a handful of wholesale coffee accounts. The owner wanted to grow the business, establish steady B2B and B2C sales and build a proper brand. At first that was quite an open-ended ambition, but we encouraged each other, attended fairs and built up the design piece by piece. The business grew naturally along the way.

I only knew of the owner through other people. A close friend worked there and told me HITCH was looking for a designer who understood coffee. Outsourcing and working with designers unfamiliar with coffee kept leading to misunderstandings about practical things, such as the character of the beans or how people moved around the shop. They had been searching for four months. I happened to be working between coffee and a design company, so the timing was right.

The most important task was making the owner’s ideas visible. At the heart of the coffee he wanted to serve was accessibility: coffee anyone could enjoy comfortably, without finding it difficult.

The owner chose HITCH from hitchhiking, and we developed ‘Let’s go together’ together. We agreed to build a coffee brand that felt as easy to approach as setting out on a hitchhiking trip, using words that welcomed everyone.

The owner wanted a slightly kitsch identity. Red and blue were the colours we associated with that mood, and we decided to make them highly saturated so they would catch the eye at once. We were still a small brand. When a small business goes to a large fair, it needs that kind of clarity to attract people’s attention.

At first, the owner felt that showing things beyond coffee would make the branding more substantial. We began with cups and clothing, which customers noticed most in the café, and gradually added more. Coffee was the starting point; we widened the points of contact a little at a time.

Mostly things used inside the café, such as coasters and blankets. Stickers were one of the few items used outside it. Because the café was in an office district, stationery such as masking tape also did well.

There was one item with no real connection to coffee: a lighter. Customers who smoked would casually pick one up at the till and say, ‘This too, please.’ In fact, the lighter was our best seller. [Laughs.] The principle was clear: apart from the more expensive clothing, these should be things someone could comfortably add when buying a drink in the neighbourhood.

Apart from sales outreach, marketing and design moved almost as one. I had never wanted to join a large company. I wanted a more dynamic way of working, and a sense of belonging mattered to me. A big organisation can feel fixed, with everyone doing an assigned task. In a small business, you can see the results of your ideas and work right in front of you. That suited me.

I didn’t start by deciding to take charge of marketing. While designing, I kept thinking about how something could sell better or improve revenue. That naturally led me to suggest, ‘Shall we try this? What about that?’ We discussed the ideas and put them into practice together, and my role grew from there.

The brand became clearly visible to people. The two most decisive things were attending major coffee fairs such as Café Show, and social media.

YouTube. I appeared in the videos rather than planning them. The roaster and the owner were both very interested in video, so we gave it a try.

We eventually stopped because there was nobody dedicated to it. The people doing the day-to-day work also had to make the videos, and there simply wasn’t enough time to prepare. When sales grow, the amount of core work grows too. After a full day of roasting, it wasn’t realistic for the roaster to edit long videos. The project naturally came to a stop.

First, I listen to the brand’s own story. I take time to understand its existing character and history, then ask the client for references that show where they would like the brand to go.

I think everyone is a designer with their own criteria. Each person finds different things beautiful or good. What looks right to me as a designer may not look right to the owner. Getting our thinking in sync is therefore the most important part. I first gather the things the owner responds to, then work them into the brand’s existing character without making them feel out of place.

Exactly. That’s why I also offer references myself. I show a specific image and ask, ‘How does this feel?’ Often that is when someone can say clearly, ‘Actually, it isn’t this direction I want; it’s more like this.’

Something similar happened with a Japanese client a few months ago. I followed their references closely, but it turned out they wanted my personal style, rather than the style of those references. They were looking for a collaboration with Chae Suin as a designer, not simply an outsourced design service. Once I understood that, I brought my own character fully into the merchandise, and we finished happily. To avoid these subtle misunderstandings, exchanging references often and having plenty of conversations works better than communicating through formal reports alone.

Perhaps because I mainly work with small brands, the actual finished object matters most to me. Small brands have limited budgets. A well-known branding agency may have separate designers and assistants to handle those practical details, but that can be beyond a small brand’s budget. I believe the designer working with a small brand should take responsibility for that practical work too.

The finished object has to be right for me to feel comfortable charging for the work. That is why I communicate as much as possible throughout the process and make repeated revisions when necessary. Counting every revision and charging extra each time doesn’t suit me. What matters most is thinking it through together until we have a real object everyone is happy with.

If all I did was make a proposal on a screen and hand it over, the progress of AI would make me anxious. As the technology became more capable, that work could soon be replaced.

But AI cannot take over the things I have just described: asking detailed questions about what an owner truly wants, measuring a folding carton myself, recommending one structure over another, placing a print order, or feeling paper with my fingertips to find the right stock. AI may make recommendations from data, but reaching precisely the result a brand needs also takes conversations and experience gained in the field. So I’m not anxious. I would rather use AI intelligently to make the result better.

For repetitive, time-consuming work and supporting tasks: putting a design onto a packaging mock-up or creating simple design assets. I used to spend time paying for resources or searching for free ones. Now I can leave that groundwork to AI and spend my time on the essential planning and on refining the details.

I build the overall structure and character of the design myself, then use AI for a little further processing. If you hand the whole thing over to AI at the start, it becomes difficult to make precise changes later. The technology may improve, but for now a person working directly on the details can still be much more sensitive.