I'm Michael Shin. I study buildings and build brands.

I'm a third-year architecture student at the University of Miami who has fallen into the trap of Miami entrepreneurship. Exploring the world of architecture has taught me that everything has a reason: every surface answers to a structure, and every detail argues for the whole. In a similar fashion, reaching a specific audience is never about the surface alone. The post, the caption, the campaign are all surfaces that have to answer to a structure underneath: a strategy, a point of view, a reason to care. Get the structure right, and every detail starts arguing for the whole. The studio work is where that thinking was trained.

Over the past two years, I've done the full stack of early-stage brand work. It all started when I posted my first photography dump and pizza.man.photo was born. I've since moved onto a more professional handle, but laying that foundation has led me to countless opportunities: UTern's launch strategy and scaling their paid, owned, and earned media; APEX STUDENT's brand system, including the website, the newsletter and blog, and the visual direction across the mascot, UI, and logo; and Stamped, a travel concept about treating content like a luxury. And along the way: photography and film, including "Bouquet for the Rain," winner of the 2026 Michele Edelson Photography Award at the University of Miami's Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition, and scaling a friend's Instagram account to 30k followers and counting.

I am constantly building, whether it's in school or out. Studio sharpens how I think; startups sharpen how fast I move. One teaches me to draw the whole system before the first line; the other teaches me to ship before the moment passes. Right now I'm looking for the next real thing to build, early-stage teams that need someone who can own brand and content end to end and move at founder speed.