me

koomi

My name is Courtney Young and I will be receiving a BFA in the Graphic Design program at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa in Spring 2007. I have lived in Hawai‘i all my life, but look forward to expanding my horizons, personally and academically.

My identity derives from the Japanese word kumihimo which is a traditional cord-braiding technique. There are two parts to the word, kumi meaning 'coming together' and himo meaning 'string, cord, or rope.' I believe that what we do as designers is similar to cord-braiding. We take separate elements, then with time and hard work, we produce a cohesive result.

However, as an identity, i wanted to create a more unique name, rather than just 'kumihimo.' Therefore, I shortened it to kumi. By itself, its meaning is "composition, typesetting, collection." This was an especially fitting description for myself as a designer, so I decided to work with it.

But as fate would have it, Googling kumi yielded an unexpected and undesirable top hit. So in order to further personalize my identity, I modified the spelling of kumi. I came up with a number of possibilities and picked the one that retained its original pronunciation, koomi.