{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Craft with May Globus","title":"[ep 086] Sung Lee on new creative challenges, emotional vulnerability & Korea's cultural dominance ","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":5356,"description":"There’s a built-in optimism and passion to Sung Lee that’s contagious—and he is well-loved by many because of it. He was employee number one at Herschel Supply, first as a graphic designer and, over the course of a decade, became the brand’s creative director. Now, Sung leads creative at premium, contemporary dinnerware brand Fable. He was born in Korea and spent his childhood there. An architect, his father was the definition of a stoic, emotionally closed Asian father. His mother, an art teacher, continuously nurtured his creative side, encouraging him to draw, paint, and go to art school. Their upper middle class life ended when the IMF economic crisis hit Korea and, one day, Sung was suddenly told they had to live with an aunt. It turned out his father had borrowed money to keep his business afloat, and the Korean equivalent of the yakuza had come around to settle and his father wanted to keep the family safe. Eventually, the family moved to Canada, with Sung applying to an ESL school—he struggled until his mother enrolled him in a Korean art school, where he made some friends. This brought him to Emily Carr, where he learned to present his work in English phonetically. On a trip back to Korea, his father expressed he was sick—his parents returned to Canada, leaving 23-year-old Sung to sell their house in Korea. As he drove home from the airport, his mother told him his father had cancer and, two weeks later, Sung’s father passed. To move through grief, Sung took on a physical warehouse job. After a few months, his creative spirit came back. He started by launching a fashion show and landed a job at a small design agency that had an office beside Vans, where Lyndon Cormack worked prior to launching Herschel Supply with his brother Jamie. It was an instant meeting of like design minds, leading to a deep bond with the Cormacks and launching his long career as a creative director.  In this conversation, we examine the effects on not sharing emotions with his...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/8tu7hXSm3PFXYi4Py1buMVA-8SkFhDmkfS_Zn30YrGY/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzE3Nzc2LzE2MTEz/NDAyNDgtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}