Hi, it’s nice to meet you!

My name is James, and I’m a New York City based artist and creative director. I was born in South Korea, transplanted to the states and grew up in Connecticut. I studied studio art at New York University, and have been living in NYC ever since.

My passions for drawing and the arts followed me into my professional career of design and user experience. I love creating beautiful designs, finding UX solutions to complex challenges, and building strong teams. My multifaceted career has traversed both the B2B and B2C spaces in travel trade advertising, higher ed med tech, and big tech. I am currently providing UX solutions at Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Origin of backwardsgun

The name is a homage to my shared love for design and illustration. Like many creatives, I began my design career by learning applications such as Adobe Photoshop. During an early Photoshop exercise, I took a photo of a pistol, cropped it horizontally, flipped the top around and blended it back down; the resulting image was that of a backwards gun. Additionally, even from a young age, my illustrations have been viewed as somewhat odd, dark and gruesome. Thus, BackwardsGun was born from a homage to my design beginnings and a wink at my artwork, which can be … a little dark.