[BizHanKook] “The speed at which artificial intelligence (AI) produces results is accelerating, and those results are becoming increasingly easy to replicate. However, the process—the deliberation behind arriving at a result and how you persuaded others to accept it—cannot be replicated.” Shin Myung-sub, General Director of SHARE X and advisor to PLUS X, shared this message while speaking at the ‘BrandBiz Conference 2026’ on the 29th. Under the theme of ‘Sharing Experience, the Value of Sharing,’ he introduced his experience in building a unique brand identity through documentation and sharing.
General Director Shin Myung-sub worked at Ahn Graphics and Naver before co-founding the design firm PLUS X with his colleagues in 2010. PLUS X is a company that designs consistent brand experiences across various fields, including brand strategy, visual design, and digital services. Director Shin currently also oversees SHARE X, a platform for practical design education.
PLUS X publishes not only its design results but also the detailed processes on its website, explaining the project background, strategy, the process of reaching the final outcome, and actual application cases. Such documentation has spread beyond the company website to other online platforms. Noting that the cumulative views of these records have exceeded 10 million, Director Shin explained, “Organizing our results was not about showing off, but about recording and sharing what makes us, ‘us.’”
It all started with progress reports during his time at Naver. In 2008, while designing the Naver promotional space for the Busan International Film Festival, Director Shin included the planning intent and work process in detail in his weekly progress reports. He later refined these reports, posted them on a blog, and disclosed the names and roles of the designers he worked with. “I wanted to properly show what kind of deliberations our team went through and what work we did,” he recalled.
Documentation and sharing led directly to business opportunities. In the early days of PLUS X, Hyundai Card approached them to commission the design of its ‘the Red’ card package after seeing Director Shin’s blog. Since then, PLUS X has consistently disclosed its work processes and results. When there was a lack of commission cases for integrated brand experience design, they designed their own company business cards, website, and signage to showcase them as a single project.
Director Shin emphasized, “People who know how we work trust us. That trust leads to opportunities. Branding for a design firm is not about the logo, but about informing others about the values you hold, how you work, and what you create.” In response to concerns that sharing know-how might reduce competitiveness, he replied, “Making things known rather than hiding them grows their value.”
The scope of sharing expanded from the company to the entire industry. Director Shin launched SHARE X by focusing on the reality that opportunities to learn practical design vary depending on region or school. By creating a platform where design firms that have built expertise in their respective fields share their experiences, they produced 42 courses covering various areas such as brand strategy, UX/UI, AI, and product/spatial design. The number of cumulative enrollments has reached approximately 30,000.
The educational content also focuses on the process rather than the final result. ‘Project Review A to Z’ shows the actual work process from project background to strategic proposals, idea revisions, and the final outcome. “Stories of the process provide greater inspiration and learning than the results themselves,” said Director Shin. Through offline workshops, they even achieved the result of hiring 5 out of 15 participants. “I started it to teach, but it became an opportunity for us to grow as well,” he assessed.
Director Shin emphasized, “Anyone can make things well now. However, the deliberations and choices leading to a result are the unique experiences of that person and that company. If only we know, no one else will. Uniqueness emerges only when you record and share.” He added, “Even with the same career background, everyone perceives and expresses things differently,” suggesting that sharing can lead to new attempts and the advancement of the industry.