Allan Yu is a New York digital designer who's worked on everything from scrappy e-commerce startups (Svpply) to tech giant moonshots (Google X). In his spare time, you can find him lecturing at The New School and nursing his Seamless addiction.
You've been involved with some pretty amazing projects. What are you up to these days?
I’ve been working on this Mars Maiers project where I make a composition a day just to practice my design chops. I started this 'cause I failed at a bunch of other things and felt sorry for myself for being a bad designer. You can read the whole story here. It’s at day 519 so far and hopefully I can keep this up for a couple more years.
What's impressing you right now?
Blackbox is an iPhone game that doesn’t use any aspect of the screen. It forces you to notice the more passive parts of your phone and how powerful those low-key features are. It’ll blow your mind, I promise.
Are.na. I’ve been using this service a lot to grab visual inspirations. The learning curve is a bit steep and I think it’s hard to describe but imagine it as a more cultural Pinterest with better annotations and references.
Where do you go online to find inspiration?
siteInspire
By far the best web inspiration gallery showcasing the newest web trends and practices. It's curated by one guy (Dan Howells) and it operates less politically than other gallery sites that run as a panel or committee.
Haw-lin
Two art directors in Germany, straight fire aesthetics.
It's Nice That
Trying desperately to stay relevant.