2026-01-08
Eric Calloway
Design Dispatch, New York
This designer’s work is not easily confined to a single discipline. Heeyeon Lee works across branding and UI/UX, approaching design as a process of structuring how something is encountered, understood, and used. While first recognized through branding projects, her practice increasingly sits at the intersection of visual design and user experience.
This approach became particularly visible through Zestera, a wellness beverage brand project that received recognition from Design Dispatch Future Forward Design Award and Brand of the day– Awarded by Braaands™. While the project brought wider attention, Heeyeon describes it less as a defining achievement and more as a clear example of how she think through design problems.
Zestera did not begin as an exercise in creating a new energy drink brand aesthetic. Instead, it started with a broader question: how is “energy” currently perceived and consumed in everyday life, and what kinds of expectations do people bring to it?
Rather than leading with product features or messaging, Heeyeon focused first on context. When does someone encounter this brand? In what physical or emotional state? What kind of interaction feels appropriate in that moment? Only after these questions were addressed did visual elements and systems begin to take shape.
As a result, Zestera functions less as a collection of visual assets and more as a cohesive experience. Its recognition stemmed not only from visual execution, but from the consistency with which experience, tone, and structure were aligned across the brand.
Following Zestera, Heeyeon’s work expanded further into UI/UX design. This shift, however, was not a departure from earlier practice. The same considerations—context, flow, and user behavior—had already been central to her branding work.
In digital products and services, Heeyeon applies similar principles. Screen layouts are informed by how users process information step by step, while brand tone is carried through interaction patterns rather than surface visuals alone. UI design becomes an extension of brand experience, rather than a separate discipline focused purely on usability.
Across graphic design, branding, and UI/UX, her work follows a consistent set of criteria. Each project begins by identifying the situation the design will enter, the actions it asks of the user, and the order in which information is understood. Rather than instructing users through overt explanation, she focuses on shaping experiences that feel immediately legible.
This approach leads to work that favors clarity over spectacle. Visual decisions are made in service of usability and flow, not attention alone. The systems she designs are intended to function smoothly within everyday contexts, reducing the need for interpretation and allowing understanding to emerge naturally.
She does not treat branding and UI/UX as separate domains. In her practice, brands are encountered through interfaces, and interfaces actively express brand values through behavior, pacing, and interaction. This perspective positions her work beyond a single output or discipline, emphasizing experience as an integrated whole.
As her practice continues to evolve, this approach extends across a wider range of projects and formats. What remains consistent is her focus on how design operates in real situations: quietly, practically, and with close attention to how people actually live with and use what is created.
