Samantha Yoo is a Korean-American designer, educator, and author-illustrator. She is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Georgia Southern University, where her teaching and research sit at the intersection of typography, visual systems, and design pedagogy.

She earned an MFA in Graphic Design from Marywood University, an MA in Graphic Design from the New York Institute of Technology, and a BA in Painting from Hunter College. Before teaching, she spent more than fifteen years working with brands including UGG, Nike, and Timberland.

Her research follows two threads. The first asks what happens when you look at Hangul not as language, but as form. Her paper on Hangul as a generative visual system investigates how Korean consonants and vowels behave as modular shapes governed by structural logic, independent of meaning. The second asks how designers learn to think. Her paper on AI in branding education documents what happened when generative AI was introduced at one specific moment in a semester-long course. Students found AI most useful early, when they needed something to push against. And the act of rejecting AI suggestions, far from being a failure, turned out to be one of the most productive parts of the process.

가. (GA.) is her debut picture book series, born directly from the Hangul research. Each book pairs a Korean consonant and vowel through the universal language of friendship, shape, and sound. She is both the author and illustrator. Currently seeking representation.