# Yeongkyu Yoo with Bauhaus Minimalism (profile on Minimalissimo)

Source: https://minimalissimo.com/portraits/yeongkyu-yoo
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Yeongkyu-Yoo-with-Bauhaus-Minimalism-profile-on-Minimalissimo?index=0x6a70865614c99b4a5a7320883a67050f9a1e7afef42072b2fd8b9aba4c73c30396835b2d
Submitted by thatalexpalmer.eth on 2026-08-03 UTC, 1 upvote, 0 comments

## Summary

Yeongkyu Yoo, a designer who has worked at iriver, Samsung, Microsoft and now his Seoul studio cloudandco, argues that simplicity is a discipline of deciding what to keep rather than a style. He says minimalism became for him a matter of filling the emptied space with deeper meaning, a shift he traces partly to Kenya Hara's 2003 MUJI poster Horizon. On the Xbox One, he says the team cut the console's thickness by around 40 percent, less than he had hoped, because of margin and production limits. His recent cac collection is a multi-year project, with most pieces taking more than five years, that he describes as a design study rather than a commercial line.

## Article

Portrait · July 30, 2026

Few designers have carried the Bauhaus line through as many worlds as Yeongkyu Yoo: from iriver and Samsung to Microsoft, and now cloudandco, the Seoul studio behind some of the most quietly precise objects in contemporary design. Across it all runs one conviction: that simplicity is not a style, but a discipline of deciding what to keep. We asked him where that conviction comes from, what it costs to defend, and where it goes next.

folio — cac collection

M

You’ve been working with minimalism since the late 90s, before the digital world became so dominant. How did that early context shape your understanding of reduction and simplicity?

YY

I was fortunate to have a great teacher during my university years. He often spoke about the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm in Germany, which grew out of the Bauhaus tradition, and its approach had a strong influence on me. What stayed with me most was the idea of a “good form”: something grounded in function and lasting enough not to feel tired over time. It was not about adding decoration, but about removing the unnecessary to get closer to the essence. From that point on, I came to see simplicity not as a visual style, but as a way of being true to function, structure, and purpose, while still creating something with aesthetic strength.

“It is not merely about emptying things out. Instead, it is about filling that emptied space with deeper meaning and philosophy.”

Yeongkyu Yoo

M

Looking back, was there a specific moment, project, or influence that fundamentally shifted how you think about design?

YY

One of the important moments that helped me re-ground my thinking about design came during my time at Samsung. I was trying to pursue a minimalist direction without adding decoration, but I was often met with the view that it felt commercially weak. It was also a time when I was questioning many things myself.

Around that time, seeing the 2003 MUJI campaign poster Horizon became a real turning point for me. That work, with Kenya Hara’s idea of emptiness in it, made my own sense of direction feel clear again. It felt as if my senses had been washed clean.

Later, I had the chance to meet Kenya Hara in Midtown and speak with him for several hours. That conversation helped turn minimalism from something I was drawn to into something I could hold more firmly as my own design philosophy.

HoloLens — Microsoft · Design credits: Nicolas Denhez, Paul Bosveld, Young Duk Song, YeongKyu Yoo, Joel Jacobs, Henric Gentz, Phil Frank, Oho Son

M

Across your career, from Samsung Mobile to Nike, LG, and Microsoft, you’ve worked within highly complex, large-scale organisations. Was it difficult to maintain a minimalist approach in those environments?

YY

In any company, the ultimate goal is to be chosen by more people and to succeed in the market. Because of that, minimalist design was often seen by decision-makers as too quiet or not compelling enough, and it was never easy to defend it all the way through.

In particular, moving an existing design language in a more minimalist direction was never just about refining form. It also meant shifting the familiar sensibilities and standards within the organization. That process sometimes brought hesitation from within the design team, and at times I also felt a strong sense of responsibility and pressure myself.

Fortunately, many of those changes found their place in a positive way, and the new design language was able to continue naturally over time. But looking back, those first moments always seem to have carried a quiet sense of tension and weight.

M

Looking back at products like the Xbox One, which reached a global audience, do you see them as successful expressions of your design principles? Did you have to make compromises?

YY

The Xbox project is one of the clearer examples of my design principles finding their way into a real product. At the time, I was invited by my design partner, Nicholas Denhez, to help shape a new design language for Xbox at a moment when the brand needed a reset. Youngdeok Song and Andrew Kim from our team joined the process as well.

What we wanted was something that would no longer read as a machine, but as a minimal architectural object that could belong naturally in a living room. To get there, we pushed to hide the disc slot as much as possible, and developed the diagonal slit into a dot-patterned air vent so the overall form could feel more restrained and resolved. But the process was not easy. There was strong resistance internally, and even the move toward the dot pattern was, at times, seen as too Eastern.

There were compromises, of course. We reduced the thickness by around 40 percent, but it did not go as far as I had originally hoped. I wanted it to be pushed further, more radically. But in the end, we had to work within the realities of margin and production.

Even so, after launch, the design was praised as one of the most beautiful console designs ever made, and the Xbox One S itself saw an exceptionally strong response, even selling out. But what mattered more to me was that the design language did not stop there. It continued, and became part of Xbox going forward.

Xbox One S — Microsoft · Design credits: Nicolas Denhez, YeongKyu Yoo, Andrew Kim, Bryan Sparks, Young Duk Song, Chris Kujawski, Travis Hosler

M

Some of your designs, like the bottle humidifier for 11+, have become widely appreciated as archetypes of minimalism. How do you feel about your work being interpreted primarily through an aesthetic lens?

YY

I’m certainly grateful when my work is appreciated for its aesthetic value. Depending on the typology of a product, there are times when beauty plays a more pivotal role in the balance between function and aesthetics.

The humidifier for 11+ was exactly that case. At the time, I couldn't find a humidifier that I genuinely wanted to keep on my own desk, which led me to pitch and design the product myself. I wanted it to be a beautiful object that quietly blends into daily life, rather than just a functional appliance.

While it looks like an incredibly simple bottle on the outside, maintaining that clean silhouette required intense battles behind the scenes with engineering. That pure aesthetic is only possible when you strictly control the internal structure and keep the complex technology out of sight. To me, minimalism isn't just about styling a beautiful form; it is a rigorous, hard-fought process of deciding what to keep and what to strip away until the very end.

So even if my work is embraced for its aesthetics first, it becomes much more meaningful if the restraint and the relentless control behind that simplicity are conveyed as well.

Bottle humidifier — 11+

M

Your work consistently carries a strong sense of physical presence and tactility. How important is the way an object is touched, held, or interacted with in your design process?

YY

I believe visual beauty is ultimately completed through touch. That is why the way an object is touched, held, its perceived weight, and the way it is actually used are all very important criteria in my design process.

No matter how beautiful the form looks, if it feels awkward or unfamiliar in the hand, I do not consider the design fully resolved. What matters to me is the consistency between visual impression and tactile experience.

To achieve that, a great deal of trial and refinement is needed. Sometimes it means understanding differences in wall thickness down to a very fine level. Whether the material is plastic or metal, I need to find the right CMF conditions: the texture, surface finish, and material expression that make it feel most refined. And that cannot remain only as intuition. It has to be developed into a clear recipe and communicated precisely to engineering.

In that sense, design for me is not only about form, but also about shaping the tactile quality of an object.

Dot Watch & Dot Pad Mini — Dot

M

There is a quiet precision in your objects, but also a certain softness in how they are experienced. How do you balance control with sensitivity?

YY

For me, ‘control’ is about precision, and ‘sensitivity’ is about empathy for the user.

When it comes to engineering or production, I’m pretty uncompromising to make sure the quality is flawless. But when someone actually uses the product, I want them to feel comfort, not the coldness of technology.

That’s why I like to either hide complex technology out of sight, or let it come through with a bit of warmth and a subtle touch of wit.

Ultimately, great design happens when these two things just click and coexist naturally in a single object.

Beer growler · Design credits: cloudandco, Yeongkyu Yoo, Nicolas Denhez

M

Over nearly three decades of practice, how has your definition of minimalism changed?

YY

In the beginning, I understood minimalism simply as a method of organizing and reducing form, closer to the act of creating a better shape with fewer elements.

However, as time passed, I came to realize that it is not merely about emptying things out. Instead, it is about filling that emptied space with deeper meaning and philosophy.

M

After years working on mass-produced products, your recent focus seems to shift towards smaller, more controlled, and often collectible pieces. What prompted that transition?

YY

I was actually struck by how precisely you sensed that shift. Over the past few years, I have been developing a project called cac collection as a way of exploring what I see as a kind of summit of minimalism.

From the beginning, I removed the commercial brief from the process and chose not to set a release timeline. As a result, most of the pieces take more than five years to reach their final resolution. But that slowness matters to me. I wanted to see how far a timeless and deeply reduced design language could go when it is given enough time, patience, and freedom to fully unfold.

Mass-produced products always come with limitations. There are production realities, margin pressures, timing, and many layers of compromise. That process still has meaning, and I continue to value it. But at a certain point, I felt the need to step slightly outside of those conditions and pursue a design question with greater clarity and control over form, proportion, material, and presence.

In that sense, cac collection is less about making collectible pieces and more about continuing a quiet design study for myself. I am simply curious to see what kind of object can emerge when minimalism is pursued with as much patience, precision, and conviction as possible.

M

With CAC Collective, your work feels less like isolated objects and more like a continuous body of thought. What are you trying to explore or resolve through this platform?

YY

cac collection began, as I mentioned earlier, from a desire to explore what a more fully resolved form of minimalism might look like. At the same time, I have long felt that as products become more commercialized, they also tend to become cheaper and easier in the way they are conceived and made. So I wanted, at least once, to make something with real care and conviction: something developed with enough time, depth, and resolution.

In that sense, cac collection is less a platform for producing new objects than an ongoing design inquiry into how far design can really go. I am less interested in reduction for its own sake than in how much clarity, density, and refinement can be held within a highly reduced form.

Being invited to Japan Creative and working with Japanese craftspeople on new experiments was especially meaningful to me. It reminded me that when a deeply refined making process meets a minimalist design language, simplicity can open into something far richer in material, detail, and presence.

I would like to explore that possibility in Korea as well. Unfortunately, I feel that the craftsmanship needed for this kind of work is gradually disappearing in Korea, especially compared to Japan. So through cac collection, I want to explore not only the objects themselves, but also the possibility of reconnecting minimalist design with a more precise, delicate, and dedicated culture of making.

round, oval & wallet — cac collection

M

Living and working in South Korea, while operating globally, how do you navigate between local sensibilities and universal design language?

YY

I’ve never tried to balance the two. Bauhaus minimalism has always been my universal language, and through my time at iriver and Microsoft, it became the global standard.

To be realistic, I wouldn't say Korea's industrial design is universally excellent. Just walking into major retail stores reveals a chaotic mix of subpar designs and unrefined atmospheres. Frankly, it’s embarrassing as a designer.

I refuse to succumb to this market inertia. When working with Korean clients, I fight incredibly hard to execute everything to a true global standard, rather than getting boxed into predictable demands.

M

Looking forward, what would you like your work to leave behind, beyond the objects themselves?

YY

I hope my work can serve as a modest reference point for other designers. Rather than leaving a grand legacy, I simply want to show how fulfilling and lifelong a career in design can be, while hoping my products bring a small, positive impact to people’s daily lives.

Play — table tennis table

M

Who would you like to see featured next in Minimalissimo?

Yeongkyu Yoo

Industrial Designer, cloudandco

yeongkyu-yoo.com

Published July 30, 2026

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