This Week New York Ar Life Magazine present Xiyu Deng. In an age where attention spans are short and information saturation rules, visual design has become the language of connection, clarity, and cultural relevance. Each scroll, click, and swipe is a compromise between creator and user—a waltz where beauty and functionality have to come together in order to fascinate, inform, and inspire. Visual design is more than just decoration; it is the alchemy that makes abstract ideas become visceral experience, converting data into feeling and brands into dependable friends. It is, ultimately, problem-solving: a carefully designed logo distills a firm’s values into one mark, while a clever app interface converts frustration into fluidity. To companies, it’s a market advantage; to people, it’s a mirror that reflects identity, values, and aspirations. Visual designers are the constructors of these silent talks, using color, typography, and composition to build bridges of intention and interpretation. What they create influences what we think of everything from social movements to supermarket delivery apps, imparting meaning to pixels and paper. As technology speeds up, the need for designers with the ability to balance innovation with empathy is ever more pressing.
Xiyu Deng leads the charge in this revolutionary field, a visual designer whose creations blend strategic muscle with poetic narrative. As a Senior Designer at Instrument, she has led campaigns for industry leaders such as Apple TV, Uber, and SurveyMonkey, reinventing the way brands speak to global communities. Her Earners Opportunities campaign for Uber reimagined gig work as a story of independence, combining dynamic gradients and split-screen narrative to illustrate drivers’ double lives. For Apple TV, she designed the Women’s History Month and Earth Day campaigns, interweaving archival textures and data-driven animations to celebrate both cultural icons and planetary vulnerability. Her gamified learning platform for Giant Steps transformed math drills into collaborative quests, winning acclaim for its colorful avatars and educator-friendly tools. Aside from corporate reports, her Cantopop Album Covers series—50 cool designs spawned from Hong Kong’s political turmoil—has been celebrated as a “visual diary” of perseverance, blending Cantonese type with eerie gradients to reflect changes in society. Named with a TDC Certificate of Typographic Excellence and a Graphis Silver Award, Deng’s work is a testament to the ability of design to bring humanity to complexity. She guides emerging talent at Instrument, building environments where risk creates innovation, and her TutorMe platform has set the standard for one-to-one learning. Whether amplifying recruiters’ “why” at Greenhouse or reimagining SurveyMonkey’s heritage through meme-worthy data art, Deng’s work is tied together by one purpose: making the invisible felt. In this intimate interview with New York Art Life, Xiyu Deng lifts the veil on her process, offering unvarnished observations into the successes and setbacks of crafting visual stories for a broken world. Come with us as we investigate the mind of a designer who shows that visual narrative is not a job, but a passport for empathy in motion.
New York Art Life: Xiyu Deng, your ‘Earners Opportunities’ campaign for Uber perfectly combines brand aspiration and the needs of gig workers. How did you navigate these competing priorities while designing the campaign?
Xiyu Deng: Balancing the brand vision of Uber with earners’ needs necessitated a design philosophy that was centered around flexibility and agency, and values which were directly reflected in the campaign’s tagline, ‘Make Uber work for you.’ We needed earners to be empowered to ‘choose how they earn’ and ‘change when they want,’ and hence every visual and text element was designed to represent that autonomy.
For example, the hero message ‘Make the most of your time on and off the road’ became the starting point for our imagery. We employed a simple, energetic layout with double screens—one displaying earners driving purposefully, the other depicting times of personal time, such as a driver guiding his child’s soccer game. This dualism visually underpinned the promise of balance of the campaign. The phrase ‘expand your opportunities’ triggered interactive modules in the app, like a sliding scale that allowed earners to see how making changes in their hours might help toward reaching their objectives. The gradient palette of cool blues (relaxed, off-road time) to bright oranges (active earning) reinforced subtly the notion of smooth transitions between work and life.
The ‘See How’ call-to-action was designed to be bold but accessible, accompanied by a progress wheel animation that rewarded small achievements—such as reaching a daily earnings threshold—to encourage earners. One of the earners described how the interface assisted them in planning around evening classes, living up to the campaign’s founding principle: earning ‘on your terms.’
New York Art Life: That’s amazing! Your Women’s History Month and Earth Day Apple TV campaigns are such a great balance of art and inclusivity. How did you develop visual themes that were locally relevant and universally appreciated?
Xiyu Deng: Creating Apple TV’s Women’s History Month and Earth Day campaigns called for a visual vocabulary that respected both intimate stories and overarching realities.
For Women’s History Month, we took our cue from works such as ‘Breakthrough Women Directors’ and ‘Through the Lens of Black Life’—not only showcasing icons, but the unheralded toughness of everyday heroes. The campaign’s hero imagery employed layered collages: faces of directors were set side by side with textural content such as archive protest posters or scribbled scripts, a physical connection to the past. Deep golds and violets used in gradient hues represented battle and victory, respectively, whereas typography tailored especially combined strong sans-serifs (towards novelty) with the refinement of delicate serifs (showing reverence).
Apple TV’s Earth Day promotional campaign featured the elemental columns—Land, Air, Water, Ice, Heat—to narrate a story around the strength and vulnerability of our world. Working with scientists, we translated data into feeling: cracked earth textures for Land, particle simulations of whirling dust-to-seeds for Air, and thermographic gradients dissolving with increasing Heat. Ice matched satellite imagery of glaciers with haunting soundscapes. The ‘More to Discover’ area allowed users to explore each aspect interactively, fueling a an increase in environmental documentary viewing. This mix of science, art, and narrative didn’t just render the planet’s beat; it left audiences experiencing their place in its rhythm. Inclusivity isn’t representation alone; it’s creating spaces wherein each viewer beholds their own story as belonging to a communal fabric.
New York Art Life: Your ability to take complex concepts and turn them into compelling visuals is impressive. How did you come to translate intangible concepts such as “purpose” into concrete visual elements when creating Greenhouse’s Brand Awareness Platform?
Xiyu Deng: We started translating ‘purpose’ into visuals for Greenhouse’s platform by grounding the campaign in the unfettered, human narratives of recruiters like Marvin, Kathryn, and Shirim. Their words—’I hire to foster growth’, ‘give back to the next generation’, and ‘help others feel valued’—became the emotional foundation.
We condensed these stories into a core palette of sage green (growth), terracotta (community), and deep cobalt (trust), with additional shades such as aurora yellow to represent the ‘spark’ of discovering one’s ‘why’. For Marvin’s story, we layered organic textures—cracked earth blossoming into thriving vines—to reflect his approach to cultivating potential. Kathryn’s emphasis on evolution was brought to life in kinetic typography where the letters transformed from stiff serifs into flowing scripts, responding to her statement about assisting businesses in ‘evolving.’ Shirim’s image combined soft, cozy photography with hand-written overlays of her statements (‘seen, heard, valued’), providing a touchable connection to her objective.
The slogan ‘Hire for what’s next’ led to an engaging ‘Why Builder’ device: users were able to drag-and-drop terms such as ‘legacy’ or ‘innovation’ into a dynamic mosaic, each selection releasing bright gradients and recruiter video endorsements. The ‘What’s your why?’ question (from Shirim’s bio) was turned into a confident, pulsing CTA, encouraging users to think and do. The biggest victory was feedback such as a hiring manager stating, ‘The imagery made my “why” not feel like a mantra—but a roadmap. By basing intangible purpose on the grit and grace of authentic voices, we made brand awareness a mirror in which every user saw their own story.
New York Art Life: That’s incredible! Your visionary design for the gamified learning identity not only captivates users but also inspires a deeper connection to the learning experience. In building Giant Steps’ Gamified Learning Identity, how did educators and learners respond to the identity, and were there unexpected reactions that surprised you?
Xiyu Deng: Educators and students welcomed Giant Steps’ gamified persona with a blend of excitement and interest that exceeded our projections. The motto ‘Turning practice into play’ wasn’t merely a slogan. It became a lived reality in classrooms. Teachers indicated that the colorful, modular aesthetic—such as progress badges in the form of mountain peaks and interactive quizzes presented as ‘adventure maps’—converted mundane drills into cooperative quests.
One teacher at a school explained how students created ‘learning clans’ to overcome math problems, echoing the platform’s ‘Grouping Technology’ feature, which converted tests into collaborative games. Students were drawn to the dynamic avatars and rewardable incentives based on the ‘Business, Company, Games, Sports’ themes. A surprising response came from neurodiverse students who found the platform’s visual predictability (e.g., color-coded skill pathways) soothing, resulting in a boost in engagement across focus groups. Surprisingly, teachers started using the gamified resources as peer mentoring resources. This reminded me that learning is not merely personal. It’s a collective experience. The combination of fundamental discipline and whimsical exploration didn’t only engage users. It reshaped the way they viewed development, making ‘practice’ a chore a pulsing rhythm of possibility.
New York Art Life: Excellent! Your skill at weaving tradition and innovation together in the anniversary campaign seamlessly encapsulates the spirit of SurveyMonkey while connecting with a modern audience. To SurveyMonkey’s 25th Anniversary Campaign, how did you strike a balance between celebrating SurveyMonkey’s past and updating its brand narrative to the anniversary campaign?
Xiyu Deng: Finding a balance between SurveyMonkey’s 25-year heritage and a new, irreverent voice required marrying data-driven rigor with playful audacity. The campaign’s backbone was the ‘Dare To Ask’ spirit—a tribute to the brand’s roots in fearless inquiry, now reframed for a society fixated on both nostalgia and novelty. We respected heritage in archival details: the crimson of the original logo was retained but complemented with a more modern, geometric font, and period survey icons (such as checkboxes and pie charts) were refashioned as dynamic 3D animations. For modern appeal, we leaned into absurd, viral-worthy results like ‘73% of Bey fans want a country album’ or ‘passengers screaming for more than just a seat’—real data points that showcased SurveyMonkey’s range, from the hilarious to the profound. These turned into ‘Result Cards’ with bold, meme-style visuals: imagine Beyoncé wearing a cowboy hat with a glittering data viz superimposed on top, or a Greyhound bus transforming into a rollercoaster to visualize their customer experience transformation.
The ’25 Years of Results’ slogan grounded the campaign in heritage, but we surprised and delighted by allowing users to engage with timelines—clicking on a 2005 poll on flip phones, say, activated an AR filter that ‘aged’ their selfies with old-school tech bugs. This project proved that honoring legacy isn’t about repetition—it’s about giving a 25-year-old brand the tools to spark conversations it never knew it could host.
New York Art Life: That’s really commendable! Your skill at freezing a moment’s feel in an album cover is fantastic. Now, we want to ask about your 50 Cantopop album covers creation. How directly affected Hong Kong’s political environment and influenced the tone and imagery on covers such as No Tomorrow?
Xiyu Deng: Hong Kong’s politics during 2019 were an elemental undertow that infused each painting and every pixel of my Cantopop album covers. The demonstrations against the extradition bill, then the rollout of the national security law’s heavy-handed enforcement, forged a shared sense of fear, defiance, and tenuous hope—sentiments that echoed through the music coming out of the city. For No Tomorrow by C AllStar, the haunting hook of the song concerning existential fear spoke directly to the pervasive uncertainty many experienced. I funneled this into the cover’s aesthetic: a burning, alarmist red gradient that swamps 80% of the artwork, representing how fear might overwhelm rational thinking in one night. The fluidity of the gradient—from opaque to transparent—reflected the uncertainty of life under mounting tension, where a protest or an arrest could change the course of the city.
The black line slicing through red is a brutal, stripped-bare self-portrait, my figure broken up and treading against the currents. It was deliberate. Around that time, I was in many ways just a lone presence swimming against streams of worry, and I desired the cover to be an exhibition of that openness. The blankness compelled visitors to encounter emotion directly, depriving them of distractions to concentrate on the brute. The covers were more than artwork; they were visual journals. As I listened to tales of escaping friends or caught glimpses of tear gas fog obscuring the skyline, I’d interpret that imagery into gradient, texture, and abstraction. The 50 covers, collectively, are a mosaic of our shared psyche during that turbulent era—some chaotic, others quiet, but all anchored in the urgency to document before memories faded. As the national security law reshaped public discourse, Cantopop and its visuals became a clandestine language, a way to say what couldn’t be spoken.
New York Art Life: Wow, we love that! Your talent for creating a visual identity that reflects personalized learning and community involvement is so inspirational. In developing TutorMe’s learner-centric visual identity, what design principles did you utilize to represent “personalized learning” and outcomes that are driven by the community?
Xiyu Deng: To represent TutorMe’s purpose of ‘Every strong community starts with successful students,’ we designed a visual identity based on modular adaptability and collective warmth. The central design principle was a customizable gradient palette—soothing blues for relaxed concentration, invigorating yellows for mental energy, and natural greens for development—reflecting the diverse emotional path of learners. For personalized learning, we launched dynamic progress trackers in the form of interconnected pathways where students could see their individual academic path. Every milestone revealed a ‘knowledge badge’ (in honor of the TutorMe bullet points—C for Critical Thinking, A for Academic Support), which they could personalize with avatars that responded to their interests, ranging from STEM to literature.
The ‘Class’ and ‘Way’ modules included adaptive grids, allowing users to reorganize resources such as flashcards or video tutorials into a structure that was consistent with their learning style. In order to highlight outcomes of a community focus, we created interface collaborative zones in which students were able to exchange success or establish study groups, represented as pulsing nodes within a network map. Social media integrations, such as the ‘Explore’ tab’s live streams of partnership collaborations, displayed live conversations between schools and tutors, highlighting the brand’s position as a connection between individual achievement and combined influence. One learner told us about how personalizing their avatar with a ‘Science Explorer’ badge made them connect with others in forums—testament that when learning becomes personal, community grows organically.
New York Art Life: That’s really amazing! Your achievement in design speaks well of your imagination and passion. You were awarded TDC 67 & Graphics Honors and the TDC 2021 Editorial Design Award, what advice would you give to young designers?
Xiyu Deng: To aspiring designers, I’d say: embrace the tension between discipline and rebellion. Dare to ask, ‘What if?’ Start by mastering the fundamentals with the rigor of a scientist. Dissect award-winning work, study why a serif font evokes trust or how a single Pantone shade can distill a brand’s soul. But after the rules become flesh, break them carefully.
Xiyu Deng’s career stands as a testament to the transformative power of design when wielded with intention, empathy, and audacity. From redefining gig work through Uber’s Earners Opportunities campaign to designing Apple TV’s universally relatable Earth Day imagery, her work goes beyond beauty, becoming a vehicle for cultural exchange and human connection.
Her capacity to break down such intangible ideas as “purpose” into concrete storytelling—be it Greenhouse’s recruiter-focused brand platform or TutorMe’s student-focused interface—demonstrates a precious ability to combine strategic accuracy with emotional richness. The Cantopop Album Covers project, conceived in the political turmoil of Hong Kong, is an example of her braveness to transform personal and communal strife into art that documents and subverts. Deng’s awards, such as the TDC Certificate of Typographic Excellence and Graphis Silver Award, illustrate her technical skill, but it is her tireless inquisitiveness—whether gamifying education for Giant Steps or transforming SurveyMonkey’s heritage through transgressive data art—that solidifies her as a futurist. She engages in mentorship as an artistic encounter rather than a responsibility, creating spaces where junior designers’ questions spur innovation. Her campaigns are not deliverables, but living systems where color scripts murmur values, typography bellows resilience, and gradients chart the range of human emotion.
In a world overwhelmed by noise, Deng’s work stands out with elegance, demonstrating that design is more than a vocation but a language of possibility. To visit her portfolio is to see a designer who doesn’t merely react to trends but builds them, etching an impossible-to-ignore mark on each industry she lays hands on. Xiyu Deng isn’t just crafting visuals—she’s writing the script for the future of how we see, feel, and connect. As we close this conversation, consider the broader implications of Deng’s work: How might design bridge the gap between corporate ambition and individual dignity in an era of automation and gig economies? Can a color palette or font choice really amplify marginalized voices, or are we overestimating design’s societal role? Xiyu Deng’s legacy invites us to ponder.
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