๐ŸŽจ

Explaining the 'Why' behind a Design Choice

Agent Progress
Built
Build Order
161
Keywords
์˜๋„ / ๋ฐฐ๊ฒฝ
Lesson #
S
Done
Section
Intermediate Speaking
๐ŸŽจ
IS #161 โ€” Explaining the 'Why' behind a Design Choice
How to articulate intent, justify decisions, and defend your creative choices in Korean.
๐Ÿ”Š
Iru Helper Note
In Korean creative contexts, explaining a design choice is as important as the choice itself. Saying "์˜๋„์ ์œผ๋กœ ํ–ˆ์–ด์š”" (I did it intentionally) shows craft โ€” it signals that nothing in your work is accidental.
์ด ์ƒ‰์„ ์„ ํƒํ•œ ์ด์œ ๋Š”์š”, ์ „์ฒด์ ์ธ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์˜ˆ์š”.
(The reason I chose this color is for the overall atmosphere.)
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๐ŸŽจ What You'll Learn Today

Design conversations in Korean go beyond showing your work โ€” you need to explain the thinking behind it. This lesson covers the exact phrases used in client meetings, team critiques, and portfolio presentations to justify decisions, clarify intent, and invite feedback gracefully.

๐Ÿ“Œ Design Rationale Phrases

Expression
Meaning
Notes
~์„ ์„ ํƒํ•œ ์ด์œ ๋Š”์š”
The reason I chose ~ is...
Justification opener
~์ด ๋” ์ž์—ฐ์Šค๋Ÿฌ์›Œ ๋ณด์—ฌ์„œ์š”
Because it looks more natural
Visual reasoning
์˜๋„์ ์œผ๋กœ ~์„ ํ–ˆ์–ด์š”
I intentionally did ~
Shows deliberate choice
~์„ ๊ฐ•์กฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
I wanted to emphasize ~
Explains focus/hierarchy
~์ด ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ๋งž์•„์„œ์š”
Because it fits the concept
Concept alignment
์ „์ฒด์ ์ธ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
For the overall atmosphere/feel
Mood reasoning
์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ
When thinking from the user's perspective
UX framing
~์ด ๋” ์ฝ๊ธฐ ํŽธํ•ด์„œ์š”
Because it's easier to read
Readability rationale
์‹œ๊ฐ์ ์œผ๋กœ ๊ท ํ˜•์„ ๋งž์ถ”๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
To balance it visually
Composition rationale
~์„ ์ตœ์†Œํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
I wanted to minimize ~
Minimalism intent
ํ†ค์„ ์ผ๊ด€๋˜๊ฒŒ ์œ ์ง€ํ•˜๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
To keep the tone consistent
Brand/voice consistency
์˜๋ฏธ๋ฅผ ๋‹ด์•„์„œ ์„ ํƒํ–ˆ์–ด์š”
I chose it with intention/meaning
Intentional craft
๐Ÿ’ก Key pattern: ~์•„์„œ/์–ด์„œ์š” added to the end of a clause gives a casual reason ("because...") โ€” it's the natural connector when explaining your rationale conversationally.

๐Ÿ’ฌ Conversations in Action

Conversation 1 โ€” Explaining a color choice in a client meeting
A: ์™œ ์ด ์ƒ‰์„ ์“ฐ์…จ์–ด์š”?
(Why did you use this color?)
B: ์ด ์ƒ‰์„ ์„ ํƒํ•œ ์ด์œ ๋Š”์š”, ๋ธŒ๋žœ๋“œ ํ†ค์„ ์ฐจ๋ถ„ํ•˜๊ฒŒ ์œ ์ง€ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”. ๋„ˆ๋ฌด ๊ฐ•ํ•˜๋ฉด ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ๋ž‘ ์•ˆ ๋งž์•„์„œ์š”.
(The reason I chose this color is that I wanted to keep the brand tone calm. If it's too strong, it doesn't fit the concept.)
A: ์•„, ๊ทธ๋ ‡๊ตฐ์š”. ๊ทธ๋Ÿผ ํฐํŠธ๋Š”์š”?
(Ah, I see. Then what about the font?)
B: ํฐํŠธ๋Š” ๋” ์ฝ๊ธฐ ํŽธํ•˜๊ฒŒ ํ•˜๋ ค๊ณ  ๋ฐ”๊ฟจ์–ด์š”. ์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ, ์ด๊ฒŒ ๋” ์ž์—ฐ์Šค๋Ÿฌ์›Œ ๋ณด์—ฌ์„œ์š”.
(I changed the font to make it easier to read. When thinking from the user's perspective, this looks more natural.)
Conversation 2 โ€” Defending white space in a design review
A: ์—ฌ๊ธฐ ๊ณต๊ฐ„์ด ๋„ˆ๋ฌด ๋งŽ์€ ๊ฒƒ ๊ฐ™์•„์š”.
(This area seems to have too much space.)
B: ์˜๋„์ ์œผ๋กœ ์—ฌ๋ฐฑ์„ ๋งŽ์ด ๋’€์–ด์š”. ์‹œ๊ฐ์ ์œผ๋กœ ๊ท ํ˜•์„ ๋งž์ถ”๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”. ๋ณต์žกํ•œ ๋Š๋‚Œ์„ ์ตœ์†Œํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”.
(I intentionally left a lot of white space โ€” to balance it visually. I wanted to minimize the feeling of complexity.)

๐ŸŒ Cultural Note โ€” ์˜๋„ (Intent) in Korean Creative Culture

In Korean design and creative contexts, being asked "์™œ์š”?" (Why?) is not a challenge โ€” it's an invitation to show your thinking. Designers and creatives who can articulate their ์˜๋„ (intent) clearly are respected as professionals. Saying "๊ทธ๋ƒฅ ์˜ˆ์œ ๊ฒƒ ๊ฐ™์•„์„œ์š”" (I just thought it looked nice) is a weak answer; framing it with purpose โ€” "์ „์ฒด์ ์ธ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”" โ€” shows craft and earns credibility.
Answer
<summary>Try This Speaking Exercise
Practice explaining a design decision using today's phrases. For each prompt, give a reason using the expression shown.
A. Someone asks why you used white space. (Use: ์˜๋„์ ์œผ๋กœ ~์„ ํ–ˆ์–ด์š”)
์˜๋„์ ์œผ๋กœ ์—ฌ๋ฐฑ์„ ๋งŽ์ด ๋’€์–ด์š”. ๊น”๋”ํ•œ ๋Š๋‚Œ์„ ์ฃผ๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”.
(I intentionally left a lot of white space. I wanted to give a clean impression.)
B. Explain why you chose a minimalist layout. (Use: ~์„ ์ตœ์†Œํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”)
Answer
๋ถˆํ•„์š”ํ•œ ์š”์†Œ๋ฅผ ์ตœ์†Œํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”.
(I wanted to minimize unnecessary elements.)
C. Justify your font selection. (Use: ~์ด ๋” ์ฝ๊ธฐ ํŽธํ•ด์„œ์š”)
Answer
์ด ํฐํŠธ๊ฐ€ ๋” ์ฝ๊ธฐ ํŽธํ•ด์„œ์š”.
(Because this font is easier to read.)
D. Explain why you kept the color palette consistent. (Use: ํ†ค์„ ์ผ๊ด€๋˜๊ฒŒ ์œ ์ง€ํ•˜๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”)
Answer
ํ†ค์„ ์ผ๊ด€๋˜๊ฒŒ ์œ ์ง€ํ•˜๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”. ๋ธŒ๋žœ๋“œ ์ด๋ฏธ์ง€๊ฐ€ ์ค‘์š”ํ•ด์„œ์š”.
(To keep the tone consistent โ€” the brand image is important.)
E. Explain your decision to use a dark background. (Use: ์ „์ฒด์ ์ธ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”)
Answer
์ „์ฒด์ ์ธ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”. ๊ณ ๊ธ‰์Šค๋Ÿฌ์šด ๋Š๋‚Œ์„ ๋‚ด๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”.
(For the overall atmosphere โ€” I wanted to create a premium feel.)
F. Tell a client why you used large typography. (Use: ~์„ ๊ฐ•์กฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”)
Answer
๋ฉ”์ธ ๋ฉ”์‹œ์ง€๋ฅผ ๊ฐ•์กฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”.
(I wanted to emphasize the main message.)
G. Defend a layout decision based on user experience. (Use: ์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ)
Answer
์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ, ๋ฒ„ํŠผ์ด ์œ„์— ์žˆ๋Š” ๊ฒŒ ๋” ํŽธํ•  ๊ฒƒ ๊ฐ™์•„์„œ์š”.
(When thinking from the user's perspective, having the button at the top seemed more convenient.)
H. Explain why you chose a soft color. (Use: ~์ด ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ๋งž์•„์„œ์š”)
Answer
์ด ์ƒ‰์ด ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ๋งž์•„์„œ์š”. ์ฐจ๋ถ„ํ•˜๊ณ  ์ž์—ฐ์Šค๋Ÿฌ์šด ๋Š๋‚Œ์„ ์›ํ–ˆ์–ด์š”.
(Because this color fits the concept โ€” I wanted a calm and natural feel.)
I. Explain why a design element looks the way it does. (Use: ~์ด ๋” ์ž์—ฐ์Šค๋Ÿฌ์›Œ ๋ณด์—ฌ์„œ์š”)
Answer
์ด๊ฒŒ ๋” ์ž์—ฐ์Šค๋Ÿฌ์›Œ ๋ณด์—ฌ์„œ์š”. ์–ต์ง€์Šค๋Ÿฝ์ง€ ์•Š๊ฒŒ ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”.
(Because this looks more natural โ€” I didn't want it to feel forced.)
J. Wrap up your rationale with intentionality. (Use: ์˜๋ฏธ๋ฅผ ๋‹ด์•„์„œ ์„ ํƒํ–ˆ์–ด์š”)
Answer
๋ชจ๋“  ์š”์†Œ๋ฅผ ์˜๋ฏธ๋ฅผ ๋‹ด์•„์„œ ์„ ํƒํ–ˆ์–ด์š”. ์šฐ์—ฐํžˆ ๊ณ ๋ฅธ ๊ฑด ์—†์–ด์š”.
(I chose every element with intention. Nothing was chosen by accident.)
๐Ÿ“š
Expression Reference
Expression
Nuance/Key
~์„ ์„ ํƒํ•œ ์ด์œ ๋Š”์š”
"The reason I chose ~"
~์ด ๋” ์ž์—ฐ์Šค๋Ÿฌ์›Œ ๋ณด์—ฌ์„œ์š”
Visual naturalness
์˜๋„์ ์œผ๋กœ ~์„ ํ–ˆ์–ด์š”
Deliberate choice
~์„ ๊ฐ•์กฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
Emphasis intent
~์ด ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ๋งž์•„์„œ์š”
Concept alignment
์ „์ฒด์ ์ธ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
Mood/atmosphere
์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ
UX-centered rationale
~์ด ๋” ์ฝ๊ธฐ ํŽธํ•ด์„œ์š”
Readability reason
์‹œ๊ฐ์ ์œผ๋กœ ๊ท ํ˜•์„ ๋งž์ถ”๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
Visual balance
~์„ ์ตœ์†Œํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
Minimalism intent
ํ†ค์„ ์ผ๊ด€๋˜๊ฒŒ ์œ ์ง€ํ•˜๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
Consistency rationale
์˜๋ฏธ๋ฅผ ๋‹ด์•„์„œ ์„ ํƒํ–ˆ์–ด์š”
Intentional craft
๐Ÿ’ก
The ~์•„์„œ/์–ด์„œ์š” Connector
This ending turns any clause into a reason: ์˜ˆ์˜๋‹ค โ†’ ์˜ˆ๋ป์„œ์š” (because it's pretty), ์ฝ๊ธฐ ํŽธํ•˜๋‹ค โ†’ ์ฝ๊ธฐ ํŽธํ•ด์„œ์š” (because it's easier to read). It's the backbone of casual design rationale in Korean.
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๐Ÿ”
Want more reps?
Look at something you've designed, decorated, or arranged โ€” a desk, a slide, an outfit โ€” and explain three choices in Korean using today's phrases. Articulating real decisions is the fastest way to make these expressions feel natural.
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๐Ÿ“ฆ Practice Hub โ€” design rationale

Exercise 1 โ€” Choose the Right Expression

Pick the most natural phrase for each situation.
A. A client asks why the layout feels so open. The best response is:
  1. ์˜๋„์ ์œผ๋กœ ์—ฌ๋ฐฑ์„ ๋งŽ์ด ๋’€์–ด์š”
  2. ์—ฌ๋ฐฑ์ด ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ๋งž์•„์„œ์š”
  3. ์—ฌ๋ฐฑ์„ ๊ฐ•์กฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
Answer
1 โ€” ์˜๋„์ ์œผ๋กœ ~์„ ํ–ˆ์–ด์š” signals that the white space was a deliberate design decision.
B. You want to explain your font choice prioritizes readability:
  1. ์ด ํฐํŠธ๋ฅผ ์„ ํƒํ•œ ์ด์œ ๋Š”์š”
  2. ์ด ํฐํŠธ๊ฐ€ ๋” ์ฝ๊ธฐ ํŽธํ•ด์„œ์š”
  3. ํฐํŠธ๋ฅผ ์ตœ์†Œํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
Answer
2 โ€” ~์ด ๋” ์ฝ๊ธฐ ํŽธํ•ด์„œ์š” directly states the readability rationale.
C. You need to justify your calm color palette choice:
  1. ์ „์ฒด์ ์ธ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
  2. ์ƒ‰์ด ๋” ์ž์—ฐ์Šค๋Ÿฌ์›Œ ๋ณด์—ฌ์„œ์š”
  3. ์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ
Answer
1 โ€” ์ „์ฒด์ ์ธ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š” explains a mood-driven choice.
D. A reviewer asks why the button is at the top. Your UX-based answer:
  1. ๋ฒ„ํŠผ์ด ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ๋งž์•„์„œ์š”
  2. ์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ, ์œ„์— ์žˆ๋Š” ๊ฒŒ ๋” ํŽธํ•  ๊ฒƒ ๊ฐ™์•„์„œ์š”
  3. ๋ฒ„ํŠผ์„ ๊ฐ•์กฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
Answer
2 โ€” ์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ is the go-to UX reasoning phrase.
E. You want to say everything in your design was chosen with intent:
  1. ์˜๋„์ ์œผ๋กœ ํ–ˆ์–ด์š”
  2. ์˜๋ฏธ๋ฅผ ๋‹ด์•„์„œ ์„ ํƒํ–ˆ์–ด์š”
  3. ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ๋งž์•„์„œ์š”
Answer
2 โ€” ์˜๋ฏธ๋ฅผ ๋‹ด์•„์„œ ์„ ํƒํ–ˆ์–ด์š” expresses that every element carries meaning.
F. You want to explain that you kept the visual elements to a minimum:
  1. ๋ณต์žกํ•œ ์š”์†Œ๋ฅผ ์ตœ์†Œํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
  2. ์š”์†Œ๊ฐ€ ๋” ์ž์—ฐ์Šค๋Ÿฌ์›Œ ๋ณด์—ฌ์„œ์š”
  3. ์ „์ฒด์ ์ธ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
Answer
1 โ€” ~์„ ์ตœ์†Œํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š” expresses the intent to minimize.
G. A client asks why you didn't use bold colors. Your answer:
  1. ๊ฐ•ํ•œ ์ƒ‰์ด ๋” ์ฝ๊ธฐ ํŽธํ•ด์„œ์š”
  2. ๊ฐ•ํ•œ ์ƒ‰์ด ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ์•ˆ ๋งž์•„์„œ์š”
  3. ๊ฐ•ํ•œ ์ƒ‰์„ ๊ฐ•์กฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
Answer
2 โ€” ~์ด ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ์•ˆ ๋งž์•„์„œ์š” explains a mismatch with the concept.
H. You explain the layout is balanced on purpose:
  1. ์‹œ๊ฐ์ ์œผ๋กœ ๊ท ํ˜•์„ ๋งž์ถ”๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
  2. ๋ ˆ์ด์•„์›ƒ์ด ๋” ์ž์—ฐ์Šค๋Ÿฌ์›Œ ๋ณด์—ฌ์„œ์š”
  3. ๋ ˆ์ด์•„์›ƒ์„ ์ตœ์†Œํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
Answer
1 โ€” ์‹œ๊ฐ์ ์œผ๋กœ ๊ท ํ˜•์„ ๋งž์ถ”๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š” is specifically for visual balance.
I. You want to say your headline choice was to draw focus:
  1. ์ œ๋ชฉ์„ ์„ ํƒํ•œ ์ด์œ ๋Š”์š”
  2. ์ œ๋ชฉ์„ ๊ฐ•์กฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
  3. ์ œ๋ชฉ์ด ๋” ์ฝ๊ธฐ ํŽธํ•ด์„œ์š”
Answer
2 โ€” ~์„ ๊ฐ•์กฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š” communicates the intent to emphasize.
J. You're keeping everything in the same tone across the brand materials:
  1. ํ†ค์„ ์ผ๊ด€๋˜๊ฒŒ ์œ ์ง€ํ•˜๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
  2. ํ†ค์ด ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ๋งž์•„์„œ์š”
  3. ํ†ค์„ ์ตœ์†Œํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
Answer
1 โ€” ํ†ค์„ ์ผ๊ด€๋˜๊ฒŒ ์œ ์ง€ํ•˜๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š” is the consistency rationale phrase.
๐Ÿ“š
Quick Reference
Expression
Use For
์˜๋„์ ์œผ๋กœ ~์„ ํ–ˆ์–ด์š”
Deliberate decisions
~์ด ๋” ์ฝ๊ธฐ ํŽธํ•ด์„œ์š”
Readability
์ „์ฒด์ ์ธ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
Mood/atmosphere
์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ
UX rationale
์˜๋ฏธ๋ฅผ ๋‹ด์•„์„œ ์„ ํƒํ–ˆ์–ด์š”
Intentional craft
~์„ ์ตœ์†Œํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
Minimalism
~์ด ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ๋งž์•„์„œ์š”
Concept fit
์‹œ๊ฐ์ ์œผ๋กœ ๊ท ํ˜•์„ ๋งž์ถ”๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
Visual balance
~์„ ๊ฐ•์กฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
Emphasis
ํ†ค์„ ์ผ๊ด€๋˜๊ฒŒ ์œ ์ง€ํ•˜๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
Consistency
๐Ÿšจ
Pitfall: Weak Justification
Saying ๊ทธ๋ƒฅ ์˜ˆ์œ ๊ฒƒ ๊ฐ™์•„์„œ์š” (I just thought it looked nice) sounds amateur in professional settings. Always connect your choice to concept, user, mood, or intent โ€” even a simple ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ๋งž์•„์„œ์š” is stronger.

Exercise 2 โ€” Korean โ†’ English Translation

Translate each design rationale sentence naturally.
A. ์˜๋„์ ์œผ๋กœ ์—ฌ๋ฐฑ์„ ๋งŽ์ด ๋’€์–ด์š”. ๊น”๋”ํ•œ ๋Š๋‚Œ์„ ์ฃผ๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”.
Answer
I intentionally left a lot of white space. I wanted to give a clean impression.
B. ์ด ํฐํŠธ๋ฅผ ์„ ํƒํ•œ ์ด์œ ๋Š”์š”, ๊ฐ€๋…์„ฑ์ด ์ข‹์•„์„œ์š”.
Answer
The reason I chose this font is that it has good readability.
C. ์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ, ์ด ๋ ˆ์ด์•„์›ƒ์ด ๋” ์ง๊ด€์ ์ด์—์š”.
Answer
When thinking from the user's perspective, this layout is more intuitive.
D. ํ†ค์„ ์ผ๊ด€๋˜๊ฒŒ ์œ ์ง€ํ•˜๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ, ๊ฐ™์€ ์ƒ‰ ๊ณ„์—ด๋งŒ ์ผ์–ด์š”.
Answer
To keep the tone consistent, I only used the same color family.
E. ๋ณต์žกํ•œ ์š”์†Œ๋ฅผ ์ตœ์†Œํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”. ๋ฏธ๋‹ˆ๋ฉ€ํ•œ ๊ฒŒ ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ๋งž์•„์„œ์š”.
Answer
I wanted to minimize complex elements. Minimalism fits the concept.
F. ์‹œ๊ฐ์ ์œผ๋กœ ๊ท ํ˜•์„ ๋งž์ถ”๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ, ์˜ค๋ฅธ์ชฝ์— ์ด๋ฏธ์ง€๋ฅผ ๋ฐฐ์น˜ํ–ˆ์–ด์š”.
Answer
To balance it visually, I placed the image on the right side.
G. ๋ธŒ๋žœ๋“œ ๋ฉ”์‹œ์ง€๋ฅผ ๊ฐ•์กฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”. ๊ทธ๋ž˜์„œ ์ œ๋ชฉ์„ ํฌ๊ฒŒ ํ–ˆ์–ด์š”.
Answer
I wanted to emphasize the brand message. That's why I made the headline large.
H. ์ด ์ƒ‰์ด ์ „์ฒด์ ์ธ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ๋ถ€๋“œ๋Ÿฝ๊ฒŒ ํ•ด ์ค˜์„œ์š”.
Answer
Because this color softens the overall atmosphere.
I. ๋ชจ๋“  ์š”์†Œ๋ฅผ ์˜๋ฏธ๋ฅผ ๋‹ด์•„์„œ ์„ ํƒํ–ˆ์–ด์š”.
Answer
I chose every element with intention/meaning.
J. ์ด ์ด๋ฏธ์ง€๊ฐ€ ๋” ์ž์—ฐ์Šค๋Ÿฌ์›Œ ๋ณด์—ฌ์„œ, ์ด๊ฑธ๋กœ ๋ฐ”๊ฟจ์–ด์š”.
Answer
Because this image looks more natural, I switched to it.
๐Ÿ“š
Vocabulary Cheat Sheet
Korean
English
์—ฌ๋ฐฑ
white space / margin
๊ฐ€๋…์„ฑ
readability
์ง๊ด€์ ์ด๋‹ค
to be intuitive
๊ฐ™์€ ์ƒ‰ ๊ณ„์—ด
same color family
๋ฐฐ์น˜ํ•˜๋‹ค
to place / arrange
๋ฏธ๋‹ˆ๋ฉ€ํ•œ
minimal
๋ถ€๋“œ๋Ÿฝ๊ฒŒ ํ•˜๋‹ค
to soften
์˜๋ฏธ๋ฅผ ๋‹ด๋‹ค
to carry meaning
์š”์†Œ
element
๐Ÿ’ก
Grammar Tip
~๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ means "in order to" โ€” a slightly more formal connector than ~์–ด์„œ/์•„์„œ์š”. Use it when you want to sound intentional and polished: ๊ท ํ˜•์„ ๋งž์ถ”๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š” (in order to balance it).

Exercise 3 โ€” Complete the Sentence

Fill in the blank to complete the design rationale.
A. ์ด ๋ ˆ์ด์•„์›ƒ์„ __, ์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ๊ฒฝํ—˜์„ ๋จผ์ € ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์–ด์š”.
(I chose this layout โ€” I thought about user experience first.)
Answer
์„ ํƒํ•œ ์ด์œ ๋Š”์š”
B. ์–ด๋‘์šด ๋ฐฐ๊ฒฝ์„ __ ๋” ๊ณ ๊ธ‰์Šค๋Ÿฝ๊ฒŒ ๋ณด์—ฌ์„œ์š”.
(Because the dark background looks more premium.)
Answer
์“ด ๊ฑด์š” / ์„ ํƒํ•œ ๊ฑด์š” (reason connector:) ๋” ๊ณ ๊ธ‰์Šค๋Ÿฝ๊ฒŒ ๋ณด์—ฌ์„œ์š”
C. __ ๋””์ž์ธ์ด ๋” ์ž์—ฐ์Šค๋Ÿฌ์›Œ ๋ณด์—ฌ์„œ์š”.
(When thinking from the user's perspective, the design looks more natural.)
Answer
์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ
D. ์žฅ์‹์ ์ธ ์š”์†Œ๋ฅผ __ ํ•ต์‹ฌ ๋‚ด์šฉ์— ์ง‘์ค‘ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”.
(I wanted to minimize decorative elements to focus on the core content.)
Answer
์ตœ์†Œํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
E. __ ๊ฐ™์€ ์ƒ‰์„ ๋ฐ˜๋ณตํ•ด์„œ ์ผ์–ด์š”.
(To keep the tone consistent, I repeated the same color.)
Answer
ํ†ค์„ ์ผ๊ด€๋˜๊ฒŒ ์œ ์ง€ํ•˜๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
F. ํ—ค๋“œ๋ผ์ธ์„ ํฌ๊ฒŒ ํ•œ ๊ฑด ๋ธŒ๋žœ๋“œ ๋ฉ”์‹œ์ง€๋ฅผ __.
(Making the headline large was to emphasize the brand message.)
Answer
๊ฐ•์กฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
G. ์ด ํฐํŠธ๊ฐ€ ๋‹ค๋ฅธ ๊ฒƒ๋ณด๋‹ค __.
(This font is easier to read than others.)
Answer
๋” ์ฝ๊ธฐ ํŽธํ•ด์„œ์š”
H. ์™ผ์ชฝ์— ์—ฌ๋ฐฑ์„ ๋‘” ๊ฑด __.
(Leaving space on the left was to balance it visually.)
Answer
์‹œ๊ฐ์ ์œผ๋กœ ๊ท ํ˜•์„ ๋งž์ถ”๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
I. ์ด ์‚ฌ์ง„์ด __ ๋ฐ”๊ฟจ์–ด์š”.
(I changed it because this photo looks more natural.)
Answer
๋” ์ž์—ฐ์Šค๋Ÿฌ์›Œ ๋ณด์—ฌ์„œ์š”
J. ๋ชจ๋“  ์ƒ‰ ์„ ํƒ์€ __.
(Every color choice was made with intention.)
Answer
์˜๋ฏธ๋ฅผ ๋‹ด์•„์„œ ์„ ํƒํ–ˆ์–ด์š”
๐Ÿ“š
Sentence Starters
Starter
Meaning
~์„ ์„ ํƒํ•œ ์ด์œ ๋Š”์š”
"The reason I chose ~"
์˜๋„์ ์œผ๋กœ
Intentionally
~์„ ๊ฐ•์กฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
"I wanted to emphasize ~"
~์ด ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ๋งž์•„์„œ์š”
"Because it fits the concept"
์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ
"From a user's perspective"
~์„ ์ตœ์†Œํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
"I wanted to minimize ~"
ํ†ค์„ ์ผ๊ด€๋˜๊ฒŒ ์œ ์ง€ํ•˜๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
"To keep the tone consistent"
์˜๋ฏธ๋ฅผ ๋‹ด์•„์„œ ์„ ํƒํ–ˆ์–ด์š”
"Chosen with intention"
๐Ÿ’ก
Production Tip
When answering "์™œ์š”?" (Why?), aim for a two-part answer: state the intent, then give the reason. E.g., "๊ฐ•์กฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”. ๋ฉ”์ธ ๋ฉ”์‹œ์ง€๊ฐ€ ์ค‘์š”ํ•ด์„œ์š”." (I wanted to emphasize it โ€” the main message is important.)

Exercise 4 โ€” Dialogue Completion

Complete the exchange with a natural design rationale.
A.
A: ์™œ ์ด๋ ‡๊ฒŒ ์—ฌ๋ฐฑ์ด ๋งŽ์•„์š”?
B: __
Answer
์˜๋„์ ์œผ๋กœ ์—ฌ๋ฐฑ์„ ๋’€์–ด์š”. ๋ณต์žกํ•ด ๋ณด์ด๋Š” ๊ฑธ ์ตœ์†Œํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”.
(I intentionally left white space โ€” I wanted to minimize visual complexity.)
B.
A: ์ด ํฐํŠธ๋ฅผ ๊ณ ๋ฅธ ์ด์œ ๊ฐ€ ๋ญ์˜ˆ์š”?
B: __
Answer
์ด ํฐํŠธ๋ฅผ ์„ ํƒํ•œ ์ด์œ ๋Š”์š”, ๋” ์ฝ๊ธฐ ํŽธํ•ด์„œ์š”. ์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ ์ด๊ฒŒ ๋” ์ž์—ฐ์Šค๋Ÿฌ์›Œ ๋ณด์—ฌ์„œ์š”.
(The reason I chose this font is that it's easier to read โ€” when thinking from the user's perspective, it looks more natural.)
C.
A: ์™œ ์ด๋ ‡๊ฒŒ ์ฐจ๋ถ„ํ•œ ์ƒ‰์„ ์ผ์–ด์š”?
B: __
Answer
์ „์ฒด์ ์ธ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”. ๋ธŒ๋žœ๋“œ ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ๋งž๋Š” ์ƒ‰์„ ๊ณ ๋ฅด๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”.
(For the overall atmosphere โ€” I wanted to choose a color that fits the brand concept.)
D.
A: ์—ฌ๊ธฐ ์ด๋ฏธ์ง€๊ฐ€ ์ข€ ์ž‘์€ ๊ฒƒ ๊ฐ™์•„์š”.
B: __
Answer
์˜๋„์ ์œผ๋กœ ์ž‘๊ฒŒ ํ–ˆ์–ด์š”. ํ…์ŠคํŠธ๋ฅผ ๊ฐ•์กฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”.
(I intentionally made it small โ€” I wanted to emphasize the text.)
E.
A: ์™œ ๊ฐ™์€ ์ƒ‰๋งŒ ๋ฐ˜๋ณตํ•ด์„œ ์จ์š”?
B: __
Answer
ํ†ค์„ ์ผ๊ด€๋˜๊ฒŒ ์œ ์ง€ํ•˜๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”. ๋ธŒ๋žœ๋“œ ์ด๋ฏธ์ง€๊ฐ€ ํ”๋“ค๋ฆฌ๋ฉด ์•ˆ ๋ผ์„œ์š”.
(To keep the tone consistent โ€” the brand image shouldn't feel inconsistent.)
F.
A: ๋ฒ„ํŠผ์ด ์™œ ์œ„์— ์žˆ์–ด์š”?
B: __
Answer
์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ, ์œ„์— ์žˆ๋Š” ๊ฒŒ ๋” ์ง๊ด€์ ์ด์—์š”.
(When thinking from the user's perspective, having it at the top is more intuitive.)
G.
A: ์˜ค๋ฅธ์ชฝ์— ์™œ ์•„๋ฌด๊ฒƒ๋„ ์—†์–ด์š”?
B: __
Answer
์‹œ๊ฐ์ ์œผ๋กœ ๊ท ํ˜•์„ ๋งž์ถ”๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”. ์™ผ์ชฝ์ด ๋ฌด๊ฑฐ์›Œ์„œ ์˜ค๋ฅธ์ชฝ์„ ๋น„์› ์–ด์š”.
(To balance it visually โ€” the left side was heavy, so I left the right side open.)
H.
A: ์ด ์ƒ‰์ด ๋ธŒ๋žœ๋“œ๋ž‘ ์•ˆ ์–ด์šธ๋ฆฌ๋Š” ๊ฒƒ ๊ฐ™์•„์š”.
B: __
Answer
์ด ์ƒ‰์ด ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ๋งž์•„์„œ ์„ ํƒํ–ˆ์–ด์š”. ์ฐจ๋ถ„ํ•œ ๋Š๋‚Œ์ด ์ „์ฒด ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ์— ๋งž์•„์„œ์š”.
(I chose this color because it fits the concept โ€” the calm feel matches the overall atmosphere.)
I.
A: ๋””์ž์ธ ์š”์†Œ๊ฐ€ ์™œ ์ด๋ ‡๊ฒŒ ์ ์–ด์š”?
B: __
Answer
๋ถˆํ•„์š”ํ•œ ์š”์†Œ๋ฅผ ์ตœ์†Œํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”. ๋ฏธ๋‹ˆ๋ฉ€ํ•œ ๊ฒŒ ์ด ํ”„๋กœ์ ํŠธ์— ๋” ๋งž์•„์„œ์š”.
(I wanted to minimize unnecessary elements โ€” minimalism fits this project better.)
J.
A: ์ด ๋””์ž์ธ์—์„œ ๊ฐ€์žฅ ์‹ ๊ฒฝ ์“ด ๋ถ€๋ถ„์ด ๋ญ์˜ˆ์š”?
B: __
Answer
๋ชจ๋“  ์š”์†Œ๋ฅผ ์˜๋ฏธ๋ฅผ ๋‹ด์•„์„œ ์„ ํƒํ–ˆ์–ด์š”. ์šฐ์—ฐํžˆ ๊ณ ๋ฅธ ๊ฑด ์—†์–ด์š”.
(I chose every element with intention โ€” nothing was chosen by accident.)
๐Ÿ“š
Useful Phrases
Phrase
Context
์˜๋„์ ์œผ๋กœ ~์„ ํ–ˆ์–ด์š”
Defending a choice
~์ด ๋” ์ฝ๊ธฐ ํŽธํ•ด์„œ์š”
Readability rationale
์ „์ฒด์ ์ธ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
Mood explanation
์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ
UX perspective
ํ†ค์„ ์ผ๊ด€๋˜๊ฒŒ ์œ ์ง€ํ•˜๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
Brand consistency
์‹œ๊ฐ์ ์œผ๋กœ ๊ท ํ˜•์„ ๋งž์ถ”๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
Visual balance
~์„ ๊ฐ•์กฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”
Emphasis intent
์˜๋ฏธ๋ฅผ ๋‹ด์•„์„œ ์„ ํƒํ–ˆ์–ด์š”
Intentional craft
๐Ÿ’ก
Conversation Tip
End your explanation with a soft check-in: ์–ด๋–ป๊ฒŒ ์ƒ๊ฐํ•˜์„ธ์š”? (What do you think?) or ๊ดœ์ฐฎ์„๊นŒ์š”? (Does that work?) โ€” it turns a defense into a conversation.

Exercise 5 โ€” Free Speaking Practice

Explain each design decision in 2โ€“3 sentences using today's phrases.
A. You chose a black-and-white color scheme. Explain why.
Sample Answer
์ด ์ƒ‰์„ ์„ ํƒํ•œ ์ด์œ ๋Š”์š”, ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ๋งž์•„์„œ์š”. ๋ณต์žกํ•œ ์ƒ‰์„ ์ตœ์†Œํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ๊ณ , ์ „์ฒด์ ์ธ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ๊น”๋”ํ•˜๊ฒŒ ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”.
B. Your poster has very large text. Justify it.
Sample Answer
๋ฉ”์ธ ๋ฉ”์‹œ์ง€๋ฅผ ๊ฐ•์กฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”. ์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ, ํฐ ๊ธ€์”จ๊ฐ€ ๋” ์ฝ๊ธฐ ํŽธํ•ด์„œ์š”.
C. You used the same shade of blue throughout the whole design. Explain.
Sample Answer
ํ†ค์„ ์ผ๊ด€๋˜๊ฒŒ ์œ ์ง€ํ•˜๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”. ๊ฐ™์€ ์ƒ‰์„ ๋ฐ˜๋ณตํ•˜๋ฉด ๋ธŒ๋žœ๋“œ ์ด๋ฏธ์ง€๊ฐ€ ๋” ๊ฐ•ํ•ด์ ธ์š”.
D. Your layout has a lot of empty space on one side. Justify it.
Sample Answer
์˜๋„์ ์œผ๋กœ ํ•œ์ชฝ์„ ๋น„์› ์–ด์š”. ์‹œ๊ฐ์ ์œผ๋กœ ๊ท ํ˜•์„ ๋งž์ถ”๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”.
E. You chose a very simple, clean layout. Explain your reasoning.
Sample Answer
๋ถˆํ•„์š”ํ•œ ์š”์†Œ๋ฅผ ์ตœ์†Œํ™”ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”. ๋ฏธ๋‹ˆ๋ฉ€ํ•œ ๊ฒŒ ์ด ๋ธŒ๋žœ๋“œ ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ๋งž์•„์„œ์š”.
F. You placed the logo at the bottom instead of the top. Defend this.
Sample Answer
์˜๋„์ ์œผ๋กœ ์•„๋ž˜์— ๋’€์–ด์š”. ์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ, ์ฝ˜ํ…์ธ ๋ฅผ ๋จผ์ € ๋ณด์—ฌ ์ฃผ๋Š” ๊ฒŒ ๋” ์ž์—ฐ์Šค๋Ÿฌ์›Œ ๋ณด์—ฌ์„œ์š”.
G. You used a warm, soft color palette. Explain the mood you were going for.
Sample Answer
์ „์ฒด์ ์ธ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ๋”ฐ๋œปํ•˜๊ฒŒ ํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”. ์ด ์ƒ‰์ด ๋” ์ž์—ฐ์Šค๋Ÿฝ๊ณ  ํŽธ์•ˆํ•ด ๋ณด์—ฌ์„œ์š”.
H. Your design uses only two fonts. Explain why.
Sample Answer
ํฐํŠธ๋ฅผ ๋‘ ๊ฐ€์ง€๋งŒ ์“ด ๊ฑด ํ†ค์„ ์ผ๊ด€๋˜๊ฒŒ ์œ ์ง€ํ•˜๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”. ๋„ˆ๋ฌด ๋งŽ์œผ๋ฉด ๋ณต์žกํ•ด ๋ณด์—ฌ์„œ์š”.
I. Every design decision was made with purpose. Make that case.
Sample Answer
๋ชจ๋“  ์š”์†Œ๋ฅผ ์˜๋ฏธ๋ฅผ ๋‹ด์•„์„œ ์„ ํƒํ–ˆ์–ด์š”. ์ƒ‰, ์—ฌ๋ฐฑ, ํฐํŠธ ๋ชจ๋‘ ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ๋งž๊ฒŒ ๊ณจ๋ž์–ด์š”.
J. You made the call button very prominent. Explain why.
Sample Answer
๋ฒ„ํŠผ์„ ๊ฐ•์กฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์‹ถ์—ˆ์–ด์š”. ์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ, ๋ฐ”๋กœ ๋ˆˆ์— ๋“ค์–ด์˜ค๋Š” ๊ฒŒ ๋” ์ง๊ด€์ ์ด์—์š”.
๐Ÿ“š
Sentence Starters
Starter
Use When
~์„ ์„ ํƒํ•œ ์ด์œ ๋Š”์š”
Opening an explanation
์˜๋„์ ์œผ๋กœ ~์„ ํ–ˆ์–ด์š”
Defending a deliberate choice
~์ด ์ฝ˜์…‰ํŠธ์— ๋งž์•„์„œ์š”
Concept-driven decision
์‚ฌ์šฉ์ž ์ž…์žฅ์—์„œ ์ƒ๊ฐํ–ˆ์„ ๋•Œ
UX perspective
์ „์ฒด์ ์ธ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
Mood-driven choice
ํ†ค์„ ์ผ๊ด€๋˜๊ฒŒ ์œ ์ง€ํ•˜๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด์„œ์š”
Consistency rationale
์˜๋ฏธ๋ฅผ ๋‹ด์•„์„œ ์„ ํƒํ–ˆ์–ด์š”
Intentional craft statement
๐Ÿ†
Speaking Challenge
Pick a real design (poster, app, room, outfit) and give a 5-sentence oral explanation of your choices in Korean. Use at least 4 different phrases from this lesson. The goal: sound like a designer who thinks, not just creates.
๋””์ž์ธ์˜ ์ด์œ ๋ฅผ ํ•œ๊ตญ์–ด๋กœ ์„ค๋ช…ํ•  ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ๋‹ค๋ฉด, ์ง„์งœ ์‹ค๋ ฅ์ด์—์š”! โœจ
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