, but it never made it to publication. – For your information, Min Guhong is…

The reply to my manuscript read: “Guhong, thank you very much for the manuscript. (…) Anyway, your voice seems too strong for the ‘Anyway’ series. This is less Anyway, HTML than Anyway, Min Guhong.”

The unpublished manuscript, roughly 460 sheets of 200-character manuscript paper, still sleeps peacefully somewhere on Google Docs’ servers, like all manuscripts in the world. “One writer says they avoid the word ‘anyway’ whenever possible. It is like admitting that you have already lost your way or reached the limits of logic. I nodded when I heard that. ‘Anyway’ is a word of resolution. It cuts off a flow and leads to a conclusion. It closes something while signaling a beginning. This curious conjunction changes a sentence’s direction, and a single comma before it makes the effect more dramatic. What stays in the reader’s mind is not the long explanation but the words after that comma. Sometimes those words alone summarize the dozens of preceding sentences and crystallize their emotion.”

Born March 5, 1985. I received formal Montessori education in 1989, around the age of five. I first encountered a computer, a Macintosh LC, in 1991, around the age of seven, and made my first website for a dear friend in 1995, around the age of eleven. I studied literature and linguistics at Chung-Ang University and computer programming at the School for Poetic Computation (SFPC) in the US (though I prefer to call it “literature and linguistics in a narrow sense,” or simply “poetic computation”), and learned various practical skills, including knot tying, ikebana, and design, through Google. I worked as a researcher in Professor Ahn Sang-soo’s laboratory at Hongik University (also known as “Wing House”) (despite the title, there was hardly any work to do). After working in the Publishing Division at Ahn Graphics, I work as an editor, designer, and programmer at Workroom (though I try to stick to “editor”: I still have plenty of business cards bearing that title, and all three jobs require thorough editorship), planning books such as Practical Books and Ametora and building websites large and small. Meanwhile, I run the one-person company Min Guhong Manufacturing. I discuss and teach coding from the perspective of “practical yet conceptual writing” at New Order, a self-described “cultural course for modern people.” I have given lectures and workshops large and small at Kaywon University of Art and Design, Asia Culture Center, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Kookmin University, Nanji Art Studio, The Book Society, Tokyo University of the Arts, Studio Pie, Workroom, Ewha Womans University, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul National University, the University of Seoul, Chwimiga, Fruitful School, Hongik University, Korea National University of Arts, and whatreallymatters, among others. I teach at Paju Typography Institute, whose founding I also took part in. Books I have written include New Order (Mediabus, 2019). Books I have translated include Forget All the Rules About Graphic Design. Including the Ones in This Book. (Studio Ghost, 2017). Wigo invited me to write Anyway, HTML, but it never made it to publication. My favorite fruits, in order of size, are watermelon, melon, peach, fig, and cherry. Since 2021, I have been active as a member of Aurora, formed with Kim Hyungjin and Yoon Yulli. And…