Minjun Byun

Minjun (mj) Byun

Hey, I'm Mj — a product designer completing an MFA in Interaction Design at California College of the Arts. I came to design through cooking: years in professional kitchens, including Michelin-starred restaurants, where I learned to move fast, decide under pressure, and care deeply about the person on the other side.

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“A plate is a reason for someone to sit down next to you, stay longer than they meant to, and say something they wouldn't have said standing up.”

As a kid, I loved food — the eating, and then the making of it for people I cared about. I learned early that a meal is never really about the food. It's the excuse.

In Korean we call what builds up in that time jeong (정). It isn't love exactly, and it isn't friendship. It's the attachment that accumulates between people who keep showing up for each other — through meals, through years, through nothing in particular. You don't declare jeong. It just settles.

As a kid, I loved food — the eating, and then the making of it for people I cared about. I learned early that a meal is never really about the food. It's the excuse.

I spent years in kitchens chasing it. Fine dining taught me precision, and it taught me that everything I made vanished in twenty minutes. The care was real; the object wasn't.

So I started designing. Same instinct, different material. I'm still making something and handing it to a person, still watching to see if it holds them — only now it stays. Jeong is what I'm designing for: not the moment someone uses what I made, but what's left after they've used it a hundred times.

I spent years in kitchens chasing it. Fine dining taught me precision, and it taught me that everything I made vanished in twenty minutes. The care was real; the object wasn't.

That's what I care about. I want to keep making things that bring people to the table.

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Framer

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Created by

Framer

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