Designer Nina Ahn doesn't see her life in rosy terms. She even balked when a Korean network used the title "Success Story" for a TV special about her life.
"Some call it a success story," says Ahn, 53, whose autobiography was published in Korea  in 1999. But, from where she stands, the book tells a different story: "This is a confession about how I failed at each and every corner."
She may view her life and career a bit more critically, but, based on her body of work to date, it's hard not to buy into the "success story" version. After all, Ahn is not just a designer; she works in a highly specialized field, creating conceptual designs for theme parks around the world, including Orlando's Universal Studios, Seoul's Lotte World and Beijing's Wonderland Theme Park. She also works on the architecture and interior designs for retail complexes, condominiums and hotels internationally.
From her office in a two-story building tucked away in an industrial block in Marina del Rey, Calif., Ahn shares some sketches for renovations of Lotte World, which reopened last July after being closed for six months. One design features the park's raccoon mascot standing in the middle of a giant clock on a colorful castle. She also took part in designing such Lotte World rides as Adventures of Sinbad, Comet Express and Jungle Adventures.
It's a job that requires not only creative conceptual designs, but the ability to integrate into the plan other complex factors, such as lighting, sound, special effects and electronics.
Even though her designs are quite stunning, for Ahn, what seems to outweigh any kind of aesthetic value are the practical benefits her work produces for the community at large. The way she sees it, good designs help businesses and cities attract people and potential customers, and thereby can potentially elevate previously depressed areas. The dreams of the people in the communities in which she works appear to be just as important, if not more, than her own as a designer.
"Why are you creating this?" she asks, pointing to her sketchpads filled with designs. "It's to draw more attention and give them more dreams."
Ahn's push for socially responsible designs may stem from growing up in Seoul at a time when the country was very poor. As a youth, she loved poetry and drawing, but back then educational and economic opportunities were very limited. "Everything was impossible," as she puts it.
So she dreamed of moving to France, where the possibilities seemed open-ended. That dream came true when a 19-year-old Ahn, as a stewardess for Korean Air, boarded a plane headed for Paris. During one of her regular flights between Paris and Seoul, she met a passenger with whom she was smitten, and he invited her to come to San Francisco. She accepted. The journey of that relationship and the other ups and downs of her personal and professional life in America are detailed in her autobiography, Designer of Dream.
After encouragement from her boyfriend to pursue her interest in art in the States, she graduated in 1984 with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of San Francisco and simultaneously obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts in interior design from the Academy of Arts College in San Francisco.
"The dream comes true, but I didn't have any chance to enjoy that because my boyfriend left me," says Ahn.
But even as her personal life suffered, her professional life was just getting started. Armed with her degrees, Ahn got work doing retail designs inside Bullocks and I. Magnin, upscale department stores where she enjoyed working with luxuries such as silk walls, beautiful chandeliers and marbled floors. When her employer, Walker Group/CNI was tapped to do work for Universal Studios, she got her first taste of entertainment design, which would become the foundation of her own company.
In 1990 she took the bold step of creating Nina Ahn Design, Inc., based in Los Angeles, which employed 15 employees at its peak. Her clients included theme parks, government officials and private companies in Korea. In 1993, she designed the Lotte Group and Korea Electric pavilions for Korea's first world fair in Taejon. Yet, when Korea was hit with the Asian financial crisis in the late '90s, her clients had to postpone and even cancel projects. Eventually the stress of designing while handling the business aspects of multi-billion dollar projects got to her.
"It became more and more difficult, like pulling hairs out," she recalls. In 2004, with her business scaled back to her as the sole designer, she became an employee for Cuningham Group. The company's headquarters are in Minneapolis, but she works in the Marina del Rey branch, where she now enjoys the freedom to design for the same types of entertainment and retail venues both in the states and internationally, without the daily headaches of running a business.
Ahn's super-charged Rolodex of Korean clients, in fact, has been a great asset for the Cuningham Group.
"She has an incredible depth of contacts within the community in Korea," said Jim Scheidel, who heads the firm's entertainment division. "So she brings not just the aspect of contacts, but the creativity to support us and help us to understand the cultural differences."
At the moment, Ahn travels frequently between the states and Korea while working on plans for Hallyuworld (Hallyu means "wave" in Korean) in Seoul. The future multi-billion dollar theme park will feature rides and shows inspired by the South Korean entertainment wave, which includes their internationally-embraced TV dramas and singers.
Ahn, by all accounts, seems to be the "success story" that Korean TV special made her out to be, but still, she bristles at the very idea. What makes the humble and reserved designer remotely proud, however, is how her designs have the power to change a community. In Muju, a financially struggling city outside Seoul, for example, Ahn's realized design plans for a plaza by the river, complete with a farmer's market and local eateries, at one point pulled visitors away from the popular nearby ski slopes to the former sleepy town.
 "Designs are not something for self-satisfaction or to make yourself happy and say, 'Oh, I design beautiful things and I'm so happy,'" observes  Ahn. "You have to be responsible."