“How AI reduces the world to stereotypes”
Rest of World | 2023 | Design
With the recent breakthroughs in the field of AI image generation, we created and analyzed 3,000 images on Midjourney to explore how AI “sees the world.” To showcase the depth of the data without overwhelming our readers, I designed an interactive grid that could display the various image sets made by specific prompts. Custom filters highlight specific elements — and stereotypes — within sets and add another layer of analysis. The result reveals the persistence of bias and stereotypes in AI on a digestible scale.
Society for News Design Bronze Medal in Design, Social Issues
National Magazine Award Winner in Design
Story: Victoria Turk; Photo research: Marko Drobnjakovic; Visual editing: Cengiz Yar; Design: Joanne Lee; Development: Anna Rasshivkina
Sunday Arts & Style covers
The Washington Post | 2021-2023 | Art Direction
At The Washington Post, I was an art director for the weekly Sunday Arts & Style section, designing the print pages as well as commissioning illustrations for the covers. Collaborating with talented artists from all corners of the world to craft one-of-a-kind images was truly a highlight of the job.
“The search for the perfect sound”
The Washington Post | 2022 | Design and Development
This immersive project presents people with a way to listen in and decide for themselves: what is the perfect sound? I’ve designed music players and quizzes where readers can test their ability to distinguish sound quality with music samples from Neil Young, the Miles Davis Quintet and Carole King. In addition, I used colorful dots as a motif that evokes the dynamic movement of music and anchor the different sections in which Geoff Edgers talks to over 50 people about the way music and quality of sound have evolved, from the heyday of vinyl and analogue to the rise of digital and people’s changing listening habits.
Society for News Design Award of Excellence in Design, Features
Society for News Design Award of Excellence in Audio Design
Online Journalism Awards Winner in Audio Digital Storytelling
Story: Geoff Edgers; Research: Alice Crites and Magda Jean-Louis; Design and development: Joanne Lee; Photo editing: Moira Haney; Video: James Cornsilk, CJ Russo and Angela M. Hill; Audio production: Bishop Sand
“When the world connected on Skype”
Rest of World | 2025 | Design
When Skype officially shut down on May 5, 2025, we asked readers to share their favorite memories of the platform. I wanted to honor its legacy by leaning into the nostalgia of early Skype communication. I pulled the anecdotes together into a cohesive and delightful experience by using its iconic blue color scheme, cloud motifs and classic animated emojis. Throughout the story, I also riffed on the original Skype interface by emulating the experience of making audio and video on the service throughout. That meant including the classic call buttons and adapting Skype’s iconic dial tone jingles too. I featured contributors' original Skype profile images where available, too. The result is both an ode to a now-defunct platform and a warm reminder of how technology brought us together across distances during a transformative era of digital communication.
Story: Isra Fejzullaj, Rina Chandran and Michael Zelenko; Design: Joanne Lee; Development: Anna Rasshivkina and Lily Lou; Additional reporting: Kinling Lo and Lam Le
“A closer look at why border walls won’t stop asylum seekers”
The Washington Post | 2019 | Design & Development
Our National team came across a photo that immediately reveals why a wall won’t stop immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border like supporters had claimed. I designed and developed a digital and print experience that walks the reader through the photo step by step, showing how families are able to exercise their legal right to seek asylum when they reach U.S. soil before the wall.
Story: Nick Miroff; Photo: U.S. Customs and Border Protection; Photo editing: Karly Domb Sadof; Design: Joanne Lee; Development: Joanne Lee, Matthew Callahan and Nick Kirkpatrick; Graphics: Laris Karklis
@re.illustrate
Personal project | Ongoing | Illustration
My friend Amanda and I started a personal project where we re-imagine the visuals for a story that we’ve both recently read together. This exercise has been a fun way for me to stretch both my art direction and illustration muscles. Follow along with us @re.illustrate on Instagram.
Editorial Illustrations
Rest of World and The Washington Post | Illustration
There are always quick turnaround illustration opportunties at a newsroom. Since I don’t come from a traditional illustration background, I like to spend time digging through kitschy stock images and reworking them into something new or playing with typography and shapes.
“Titian comes together”
The Washington Post | 2021 | Design and Development
Arts critic Sebastian Smee looked at each of painting from the traveling exhibition “Titian: Women, Myth & Power,” which made its only U.S. stop at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 2021. The six paintings were reunited for the first time since Titian painted them in the 16th century, and I wanted to reflect that in the topper design with a playful and eye-catching animation. Further down in the story, readers also have the option to zoom into the paintings to see them in detail as Smee shares the stories behind them.
Story by Sebastian Smee; Design and development by Joanne Lee
Homepage redesign for Rest of World
Rest of World | 2024 | Design
A publication’s homepage is essential for many reasons: conveying its identity and mission, gaining reader trust, showing the breadth of work it has to offer and becoming a destination fo readers to return to. I had the opportunity to update Rest of World’s homepage to better execute these objectives after a few years of publishing. The masthead received a significant revamp with the logo now placed center and made bigger. It is one of the most distinctive elements of our brand identity, and I wanted to spotlight it front and center with its rotating system of diacritics. The new layout also created more room for links to pages like the newsletter index. Google Analytics showed that there was a 165% increase in the average number of clicks per day on the masthead with these changes.
Another update was creating more distinguishable areas on the homepage like the Latest Stories and Donation modules. I designed the latest stories module to act more like a bulleted feed with only headlines and metadata to improve scannability and prevent any dense walls of text. The donation module was an important addition to signal that Rest of World is a non-profit publication.
The homepage’s color palette also underwent a drastic change. It used to rotate through several different color palettes in our old system, but we learned from user interviews that many readers found this to be confusing. In its place, I chose a clean white background where all of our visuals could shine and different colors from our updated palette like cobalt, navy or pink could play nice together.
Weekend covers
The Washington Post | 2018-2021 | Art Direction
The Washington Post’s Weekend section reports on things to do in the local D.C. area, and I had the opportunity to art direct its covers for over two years. My favorite story to work on was the best fried chicken chain list. After shooting all the different fried chicken in the studio, I made a photo illustration from their leftover packaging.
“Gig Workers Rising” series
Rest of World | 2024 | Design
Rest of World collaborated with Context News on its first ever video series “Gig Workers Rising” and investigated how workers are uniting to rewrite the rules of the global gig economy. There are four installments that take place in cities around the world, from Ho Chi Minh City to Hyderabad, all published within a few months of each other. I designed a template for the series including a handlettered title card as well as a video player landing page.