"The transitions that shaped me most always started internally — because those always end up moving me physically too."
– Victor Shin
Between Chapters
Victor came back from the Camino de Santiago with less than he left with. The weight lesson was physical first — a pack measured in kilometers — and then it became something else entirely. He's been packing lighter ever since, physically and mentally. Victor is a photographer, designer, and creative who has spent seventeen years in New York — based in Woodside, Queens, a neighborhood he calls "the World'side," where, as he puts it, you can hear three languages before your coffee cools down.
He moved to New York in 2009 with the kind of open-ended ambition that only makes sense when you're young and genuinely curious: to study photography and design, yes, but more honestly, to discover what kind of person he could become through making things and being around others who made things too. Seventeen years later, he's still in that same city — but not for long. Seoul is next.
Victor works across photography and branding, with a practice rooted in observation, balance, and what he calls the "inevitable" quality of good design — when every element agrees with every other, and nothing fights for attention. His personal project, Goofers, runs in the opposite direction by design: a playful reset where imperfection is the whole point. He understands both modes. That's part of what makes him worth listening to.
The rhythm before the work
We caught up with Victor in his studio in Woodside — a neighborhood he calls "the World'side," where, as he puts it, you can hear three languages before your coffee cools down. Mentally, though, he's somewhere else entirely. Not New York, not Seoul. That space in between.
He starts every morning the same way: a workout to get the body going, then a decision about where the day's thinking needs to happen. A shared office. A café. A park. Sometimes a long walk, followed by a return to his room just to reset.
"My daily rhythm stays simple," he says. "I move, I observe, I create — then I move again."
It's not a framework. It's closer to a metabolism. Movement feeds observation, observation feeds work, and work eventually demands movement again. The city isn't background to this loop — it's part of the engine.
He tends to choose his spaces based on what he's making. For art, he wants white walls and quiet — a blank canvas around him. For branding and strategy, high ceilings, more oxygen for the mind. When he needs to fully clear, he walks in nature. Not to find inspiration, but to meet himself without noise.
What stays with you
Ask Victor which moments between places tend to stay with him, and he doesn't talk about landmarks or arrivals. He talks about sensory fragments — the ones that quietly redirect where you're going and what you end up making.
"These small but precious encounters shift my mood," he says, "and my mood shifts my direction." Sometimes he photographs them — not as memories, exactly, but as triggers. When he sees the image again, the texture and sound of the original moment come back. A scent, a sound, a quality of light that was almost nothing and became everything.
He's learned to trust those fragments as the moments where life feels most honest. Not the destinations. Not the milestones. The in-between.
The same logic applies to the cities themselves. New York, Seoul, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Bangkok — each has a different rhythm, a different definition of movement, a different way people hold space. That spatial difference doesn't just shift how Victor works. It shifts how he listens, how he speaks, how much quiet he can tolerate.
"Space isn't static," he says. "My relationship to it changes daily."
What you carry
When it comes to what stays close on any given day, Victor keeps it simple: headphones, his camera and a Buddhist Mala. Each carries both function and meaning.
Music sets his mood, and mood sets direction — much like a scent can return you to a moment you'd half-forgotten. The camera holds the small encounters he doesn't want to lose. The Mala keeps him grounded. He calls it his totem of humility.
The Camino de Santiago clarified all of this. What began as a self-reflection retreat turned into the momentum for an entirely new direction — and a lasting lesson in what it costs to carry too much. "The more you pack with your worries," he says, "the harder and slower you move forward." After the Camino, he packs less. Physically and mentally.
That philosophy extends to how he reads design. What he looks for isn't a single clever detail — it's balance. When message, material, proportion, color, and interaction all agree with each other, and the solution feels inevitable. "Nothing is fighting for attention," he says. That kind of simplicity is hard. It takes discipline, not decoration. He notices it when he sees it, and he appreciates it quietly.
Comfort as a state of mind
For Victor, comfort when moving through the world is less about conditions and more about orientation. He comes back, again and again, to the Japanese philosophy of Wabi-Sabi — a mindfulness-based worldview that accepts imperfection as part of what's real.
"The attitude and the idea of 'it is what it is' is the true definition of comfort to me," he says.
It's not resignation. It's the opposite — a kind of readiness. When you're not fighting what's in front of you, your senses become more available. He notices this in transit more than anywhere: in those moving moments between places, sound, light, smell, touch, and spatial awareness all sharpen. He becomes more present. And strangely, more capable of thinking clearly.
He guards against autopilot the only way he knows how: by staying curious. The city is constantly offering material — a phrase overheard, a detail on the street, the particular smell of coffee on a specific morning — and he receives it as potential input rather than background noise. But he's also made peace with autopilot when it comes. Sometimes, he says, that's just how the mind clears space. Like emptying the trash.
Goofers, his playful project of intentionally imperfect making, came out of that same logic — goofing out as a creative reset, a way to empty a busy mind and make room for the next thing.
Seoul, and what comes next
The next chapter begins in Seoul. Victor doesn't know exactly what shape it will take — whether it will be short or long or the kind that changes everything. He's not trying to predict it.
"I prefer to let opportunities unfold as I move through environments," he says, "meeting people, learning the rhythm, and noticing what kind of work I naturally gravitate toward in the next chapter."
South Korea's creative density, its trend-leading energy, and the particular texture of Seoul as a city are part of the pull. But what he's actually moving toward is less a place than a posture — open, curious, ready to be shaped by what he finds.
There's something in that he's distilled clearly: "Nervousness is often just excitement that hasn't introduced itself yet."
What Victor describes — this way of moving through the world with attention, carrying only what has meaning, letting cities reshape how you think — is exactly the kind of relationship with movement that sits at the center of what we're building at Sotiyo.
We don't design for any single type of journey. We design for the ones that happen in between: the commute, the transition, the moment before the next page turns. Objects that stay quiet enough to let you notice what's around you.
Victor notices everything. That, to us, is the whole point.
Follow Victor's journey on Instagram at @imthevictor.
If this conversation stayed with you, you might also enjoy reading about how creative movement shapes identity and daily rhythm.
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