Albert Yu | Design + Code

Home Psychological Services

Home is a partnership between Eliza and Winnie, clinical psychologists specializing in child development and family services, with a strong emphasis on practising positive psychology. Their new website was designed around a serene, uplifting graphical identity that reflects the personality and values of the practice. The old content-management system was also stripped out and replaced with leaner, more specialized components to simplify creating structured content like articles and workshops, and to significantly reduce maintenance overhead. The responsive site was templated and built with Jekyll, hosted on Github Pages, and integrated with Prose.io for writing and publishing.

Style tiles and element collages were used to quickly explore visual styles and elements. The final design is characterized by a soft color palette derived from the existing logo and subtle photography treatments.

On the backend, Prose was chosen for its simple and intuitive interface that only exposes writing and editing capabilities. Combining that with Github Pages allowed effortless publishing and backups. A lot of technical debt created by the previous, conventional CMS was eliminated.

Ekpac Sourcing

Ekpac started in Hong Kong as seafaring merchants, evolving over the course of a century into an industrial conglomerate operating across diverse construction and manufacturing sectors. A standalone marketing website was commissioned as part of an initiative to grow the sourcing division into a core line-of-business for the group. The nature of sourcing for large scale industrial organization means generating sales comes down to the efforts and expertise of Ekpac’s global sales force. The website was designed accordingly around the purpose of reinforcing the company’s reputation for quality and service. Additionally, a concept for a visual identity redesign was developed for Ekpac to explore the possibility of a broader refresh of the corporate brand.

Additional Graphic Design: Bronson Fung

The sourcing business’s process and approach was presented as candidly as possible to stand out in China’s industrial sector, which is often perceived as opaque and impenetrable.

The new mark is distinguished by a sleek, agile form – a visualization of Ekpac’s persistent forward momentum. The redesign as a whole preserves and repurposes elements of the old identity, paying respect to the company’s rich heritage.

Junior Chef Academy

Junior Chef Academy offers a one-of-a-kind extra-curricular learning experience for kids and teenagers, which happens to be a particularly crowded space in Hong Kong. Founder Judy Li subverts the typical recipe-based approach to cooking classes, instead teaching basic kitchen skills and simple preparations with a focus on nutritional, wholesome eating, giving her students a headstart on building healthy eating habits and self-sufficiency in the kitchen. This project was a joy to work on! The visual identity design struck a great balance between the playfulness of the class experience and the seriousness of underlying teachings. Print collateral and a landing page was created to promote their inaugural series of summer classes.

Graphic Design: Bronson Fung / Production: Progressive Press

This fellow was Judy’s initial “self-portrait” of her brand, and somehow found its way into our initial email conversations about the project. It provided a good starting point for discussing topics like personality, purpose, and values – the intangible qualities yet critical qualities that make a strong brand.

The design challenge pretty much came down to putting a “fun twist” on education, which is probably by far the most common way that people position educational programs and activities for children. To differentiate the identity, we eliminated the word “fun” from our vocabulary, and explored typographical representations of Judy’s most distinct personality traits. The casual, sophistication of Pacifico’s cursive letterforms, large strokes, and generous curves captured exactly what we were looking for.

Practical, everyday skills is the most important thing Judy wanted to teach her students. As an enthusiastic home-cook myself, I understood the importance of using good tools for developing kitchen skills and gaining practical experience. Junior Chef Academy’s graphic identity began with repurposing this whisk.

Whisks happen to be a very common graphical device for anything related to food and cooking. Yet most cooks, celebrity, professional and amateur alike, would argue that the knife is a cook’s single most important tool. Judy believes that being practical in the kitchen means making use of all the tools at your disposal at the right time and occasion.

We fashioned a a whole set of kitchen tools, which was tiled into a pattern, forming the backbone of Junior Chef Academy’s identity. Repetition is inherently pleasing to the eye, and the playfulness of the pattern took the edge off its stern arrangement. The solid strokes and gently edges of the pattern was informed by the letterforms of Pacifico, which was used as a titling font.

Print collateral included a brochure and business cards. The pattern proved to be eye-catching even at smaller sizes.

Avenir was chosen as the text face for its cordial, sensible appeal, and was used for text-heavy applications like forms, schedules, and course materials.

While the fundamental “learn to cook” premise needs little explanation, the goal of the website was to communicate Junior Chef Academy’s unique angle – practicality, nutrition, and building good habits.

I’m a designer and developer dedicated to building meaningful experiences that distill clarity from complexity, marry form to function, and connect ideas to people.

I make digital products like websites, applications, anything that goes on the web or on a screen. I occasionally dabble in print, packaging, and other shenanigans. Visual identity projects with a strong digital focus gets me really excited. I produce my best work partnering with clients who value intelligent, purposeful communication.

I start projects with rich conversations to establish tone and voice, before venturing into ideation and execution. Instead of force-fitting your project into a rigid process, I tailor methods and deliverables to best meet the circumstances and challenges of every engagement.

I work well by myself or as part of a team. I can sweat the details without losing sight of the big picture. Working remotely keeps my mind fresh and keeps costs low for everyone. I’m good at choosing the right tools for the job at hand, and I’m always learning new things to add to my toolbox. I do not wear trendy glasses.

Currently available for new projects, or collaborations with other designers, programmers, artists, or engineers. I love diving into new challenges and meeting new friends.