tsan yu yinis a graphic designer with a keen focus on branding, packaging, and creative direction, taking ideas where they haven’t yet been.



Project
Index



Features & Mentions

Shopping Design (2024)
Verse (2024)
Taipei Fine Art Museum (2024)
Asia Media Centre: Part
I / Part II (2023)
The Dieline (2022)  
Topawards Asia (2021)


  tsanyuyin@gmail.com for opps or collabs


Experience
tsanyuy.in
Taipei
Self employed
2021-Ongoing

IDEO
Shanghai
Communications Designer (freelance)
2018-2025

Ugly Half Beer
Taipei
Head of creative
2018-2021

Bits x Bites
Shanghai
Art director (freelance)
2015-2017

Xue Xue Institute
Taipei
Senior designer
2000-2013

MoMA
New York
Intern
2013

Art Center College of Design
Los Angeles
Scholarship Program
2010Recognition
A Memoir (of Four Nostalgias)
Tokyo Type Directors Club (2025)

Taipei 140: Celebrating 140th Anniversary of Taipei City
Tokyo Type Directors Club (2025)

ToastTea Lager
Dieline Awards (2022)
Golden Pin Design Awards (2022)

Through the Mist I See the Fairyland
Golden Pin Design Awards (2022)

Oyster Stout Trio
Tokyo Type Directors Club (2021)
Topawards Asia (2021)

Ugly Half Beer
Taiwan Design Best 100 (2022)

A Film by Edward Yang: A Retrospective Series
Taiwan Design Best 100 (2017)

Citrus Moon
iF Design Awards (2012)
Design for Asia Awards (2012)

Dragon Tangram
Red Dot Awards (2012)


Updated on 2025.04.29
A Memoir (of Four Nostalgias)Packaging, 2024
A quiet reimagining on madeleines, this collaboration between pastry chef Makito Hiratsuka (akeruE Dessert) and Train Dai distills their four savoury memories of past homes into a delicate, sweet form. The packaging embraces minimalism—eight angled staples and two sheets of cardboard shape a vessel reminiscent of a long-forgotten keepsake box. Scattered staple clusters, both real and faux (silver foil stamped), mimic the fragmented nature of memory. Together, they silhouette a madeleine on the front and subtly spell out "マドレーヌ" (madeleine in Japanese) at certain angle, calmly marking the nostalgia it holds and shares.

㊗︎  Tokyo Type Directors Club (2025), Excellent Work



Taipei 140: Celebrating the 140th Anniversary of Taipei CityVisual Identity, 2024
For Taipei’s 140th anniversary, this identity project revisits the city’s landmarks through the whimsical spin of the numbers 1, 4, and 0. These numerals shape three key milestones in Taipei’s history, including Beimen (the North Gate), which marks the very beginning of Taipei City. The design loops between past and present, capturing the city’s constant flow and celebrating its everyday scenes.

㊗︎ Tokyo Type Directors Club (2025), Excellent Work



TOASTea Lager Packaging, 2022
TOASTea Lager is a Taiwanese beer brewed with leftover sandwich crusts and black Assam tea—an ode to the island’s beloved breakfast of crustless toast and iced tea. Inspired by the UK’s TOAST Ale, it turns food waste from local breakfast spots into something worth raising a glass to. The packaging riffs on Taiwan’s oil-proof sandwich wrappers, featuring cheeky illustrations by artist Huang Hai Hsin. Even the spent grain gets a second life—upcycled into TOASTea Tote Bags made with ocean plastic, in collaboration with A Plastic Project. From morning staples to evening sips, it’s breakfast, bottled—and coming full circle.

This project was honoured as the winner of the Design for Good category at DIELINE Awards 2022.

㊗︎  Dieline Awards (2022), Winner of the Year — Design For Good㊗︎  Golden Pin Design Awards (2022), Winner


Through the Mist I See the Fairyland Hazy IPA Packaging, 2022
Through the Mist I see the Fairyland — Hazy IPA is a Taiwan–New Zealand collaboration that explores what haze means through a Taiwanese lens. The label, created with master painter Chen Ming-Shan, honours Taiwan’s fading glove puppetry stage painting. It imagines a soft-focus archipelago where two sacred peaks—Dabajianshan (Mt. Sylvania) in Taiwan and Aoraki (Mt. Cook) in New Zealand—rise together through the mist. Inspired by the local folk art, the design loops fluorescent landscapes and misty effects, much like the beer itself. Brewed with Taiheke and Mosaic hops, this IPA drifts through tropical clouds of flavour. It’s haze, the Taiwan way—celebrating unsung craft and the hoppiness that lingers in the mist.

㊗︎  Golden Pin Design Awards (2022), Winner


Oyster Stout Trio Packaging, 2021
Oyster Stout by Ugly Half Beer is a barrel-aged experimental series brewed with oysters from Chiayi, Taiwan. To honour the ocean’s mystery and the oyster’s humility, the label draws from the oyster’s sensory richness. A shell-shaped cut-out reveals a metallic surface that shimmers like hidden iridescence, while layered wave patterns evoke tidal motion and the oyster’s textured shell. The result is a label that invites you to zoom in on nature’s quiet intricacy—and zoom out to feel its vastness.

㊗︎  Tokyo Type Directors Club (2021), Excellent Work
㊗︎  TopAwards Asia (2021), Top Score


Medra.ai Brand Identity, 2022
Brand identity for Medra, a pioneer in AI-driven lab automation. The logo, inspired by the rhythm of scientific discovery, captures precision, adaptability, and acceleration—symbolising Medra’s role in revolutionising life science research through autonomous robotics and AI-powered protocol automation.




MAMAHUHUBrand Identity, 2019
Brand identity for MAMAHUHU, serving seriously good Chinese-American food without taking itself too seriously. Named after the Chinese phrase 馬馬虎虎 ("horse-horse-tiger-tiger"), meaning "so-so," the brand plays a bit naughty while paying homage to the charm of classic takeout. The font hints at the forms of Chinese characters, and the soft pastel palette takes nostalgic cues from San Francisco’s Chinatown — an identity that feels both familiar and anew.




My Dear: New ChapterArt Direction, 2023
Key art for the 2023 version of MeimageDance Troupe’s classic work, My Dear. The direction reflects the chaos of longing to connect and disconnect—faces and bodies twisting, separate yet intertwined. Inspired by origami, the three-fold kinetic stage unfolds like a book, with dancers moving and contorting across its pages. The programme sheet follows its logic, inviting interaction, with its message revealed when folded—meant to be damaged, not kept intact.


Bits x Bites Brand Identity / Wayfinding, 2016
Branding and wayfinding design for Bits x Bites, China’s first food tech accelerator VC. The logo plays on the pixelated "bit" square and the B-shaped "bite", capturing the playful duality in the name. This idea carries through to the website’s animated landing pages—cycling through five key visuals like a slot machine—and to Beta-bet, a modular wayfinding typeface developed from Lineto’s LL Brown, deconstructed into the minimal components needed from A to Z and cast in magnet-embedded concrete to create a raw and adaptable signage system.




Nuit Blanche Taipei  2023Art Direction, 2023
Key art for Nuit Blanche Taipei 2023: Uprising in Xinyi glows in the dark, embodying the event's 24-hour celebration of contemporary art and culture. Formed by anonymous doodle figures with intentionally abused, ubiquitous smiley marks, the character 義 (Yi) symbolises justice and the event's home in Xinyi (literally, integrity and justice) District. Drawing inspiration from symbols of resistance—headbands, flags, and tabloids—the design offers a lighter take on the spirit of a cultural and artistic riot that overtakes City Hall, the City Council, and the Court, celebrating freedom and inclusivity in Taiwan's capital.