Annika Pyo

ANNIKA PYO

Korean-American graphic designer from San Francisco;
Building visual identities, design systems, publications, platforms, and community.

Currently at SFMOMA
Previously at ACLU

WORK

Gatherings: Sites for Collective Research

2025
THESIS RESEARCH
BOOK DESIGN

Gatherings brings together audience and designer as collaborators in the design process through in-person workshops, social media experiments, and pop-up installations. My methodology embraces casual settings, common language, and open-ended inquiries to allow individual interpretation and personal experiences to shape the evolution of the work. I enjoy moving between analog and digital tools, weaving together varied methods of data collection, participant engagement, and image making in my process. My research explores design as an educational tool and community building practice, a way of building relationships that extend beyond any singular setting.

This publication includes interviews with Brockett Horne, Mary Yang, Nicholas Rock, Halim Lee, Christopher Sleboda, and Kathleen Sleboda.

Sown Together

2024
EXHIBITION DESIGN
IDENTITY DESIGN

The Fall 2024 Boston University Graphic Design Senior Exhibition, Sown Together, cultivates the metaphor of a garden and the interwoven practice of design to explore the balance between individual expression, collaborative innovation, and collective growth.

Inspired by the way gardens thrive in their diversity, Sown Together is its own vegetable garden where ideas and individuality are planted side by side. Our garden is modular and interconnected in nature, sectioned by “vegetable” to showcase overlapping themes and subjects; Sown Together demonstrates how distinct perspectives come together to enrich our design landscape. Every student’s work brings something unique, adding color and depth to this collective and flourishing garden.

Visual Identity Guidelines

This is Michael Jang

2024
BOOK DESIGN

Monograph for California-based photographer Michael Jang

In the spirit of Jang’s candid approach, wheat pasting practice, and ability to slink into even the most glamorous Hollywood parties, This is Michael Jang: California’s Trespasser highlights the artist’s exciting body of work and explores the act of trespassing through sneaky typographic moves.

Pitch Deck

The First Gathering

2024
WORKSHOP
VISUAL IDENTITY
THESIS RESEARCH

The things you gather create your taste. The people you gather create your community.

The First Gathering is the first in an ongoing series of gatherings. Using collage as an accesible and analog medium, participants explore how design operates as language, a vehicle for communication and connection between designers and non-designers alike. Participants formed unlikely connections and came out of the workshop with a piece of art custom-made for them by their partner.

Graphic Design is a piece of cake

2025
INSTALLATION
BOOK DESIGN
THESIS RESEARCH

Graphic Design is a piece of cake is for anyone interested in design education. This includes educators, fellow design students, and those interested in design who maybe haven't had the chance to dive into it. With this in mind, I created a handbook that uses cake as a multilayered framework that loosely defines graphic design. I aimed to make my explanations digestible for someone unfamiliar with design terminology, the structure flexible enough to mold to each person's unique design process, and the content surprising for current designers to see their practice in a new, delightful light. Graphic Design is a piece of cake invites anyone to take a spot at the kitchen or dining table, but only those who choose to show up. No one should be forced to eat cake.

my Digi Museum

2025
CO-DESIGN
BOOK DESIGN
THESIS RESEARCH

@mydigimuseum positions Instagram as museum space, inviting viewers to engage with a collection of pieces specifically curated and crafted for this very purpose. Its inaugural asynchronous workshop and opening exhibition, My Instagram Followers Designed This Book, gives museum members autonomy over the design process while acknowledging the limitations of user participation. The result is a co-designed set of four mini Blind Box Books, re-injecting the element of surprise in the final output.

For You and Me

2024
BOOK DESIGN

For You and Me catalogs the relationships that have shaped me as a designer. Each section is a conversation between a version of “you” and “me,” taking place within the bounds of the page and between the book and the reader.

Featuring interviews with Penelope Pyo, Camille Pyo, Danielle Chang, Mary Yang, and Romik Bose Mitra