HARBOUR HOUSe
The
Project
Exploring Sai Kung Culture Through Brand Design
Nestled in a Hong Kong Peninsula is Sai Kung Town, a small Cantonese fishing village. It's harbour is lined with boats, fishermen are selling their catch, the scent of fish is in the air. Narrow alleys are alive with open doors, wandering cats, and colourful postboxes.​ Over the years, this vibrant culture has been slowly pushed out by gentrification.
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This personal project brings the village's heritage to life through an imagined restaurant/bar, translating the town's textures, colours, and traditions into a modern brand identity. The work spans multiple touchpoints, including brand design (logo, colour palette), print applications (menus, signage), digital and social media.
Continue scrolling to explore the design process, or jump straight to view the designs
Observing, collecting
Inspiration for this project began with my own memories of Sai Kung, complemented by recent visits back to the village after growing up there.
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When I think of the town, I think of its community: children playing together in the streets, family dinners by the park, swimming in the ocean, and hikes up the mountains to take in the views.
I would stroll down into town, passing wild cows grazing, and jump off boats and jetties with friends. I remember the bustling fish markets that juxtaposed the calm of the ocean air, and the colourful paragliders that dotted the skies.
These experiences shaped my understanding of the village's character, its values, and what makes its culture unique.
The Sai Kung Life
Visual Language: Textures, Patterns and Colours
Building on these memories, I turned my attention to the visual and tactile qualities of the village. The local shops are dense and bustling, with worn cardboard lining the floors, chipped paint, and stacked goods spilling into narrow alleyways. Outside, the calm ocean waves contrast with the vibrant greens of the surrounding hills, and sandy shores meet textured stone paths.​
ATMOSPHERE/PRESENCE
Sai Kung, situated by the sea on the outskirts of Hong Kong, is notably peaceful, with no metro stations within a 20 minute drive. This isolation offers a tranquil escape from the city's hustle and bustle. On weekends, however, the town buzzes with tourists embarking on boat trips to nearby islands, filling the air with lively chatter, the laughter of children, barking dogs, and families enjoying their time together. Despite the influx, the close knit community and serene atmosphere remain cherished by locals.
VISUAL ELEMENTS
To gather the building blocks of my design project, I drew on visual elements of Sai Kung to reflect it's character in my designs.
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Sai Kung is known for its stunning nature and wildlife, with wild cows, boars, monkeys and dogs roaming freely. It's sandy beaches and exposed hiking trails offer breathtaking views of numerous bays and mountains.
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The town is known for it's vibrant fishing culture, from small boats brimming with colourful catches to fish tanks at the local restaurants. The iconic 'wet market', recognised by it's red lamp-style ceiling lights, adds to this lively atmosphere.
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Another key visual element is the bamboo scaffolding, often draped with blue and white tarps. This traditional method, now largely replaced by steel beams, symbolises the cultural shifts accompanying Sai Kung's modernisation.
Local restaurants
Many of Sai Kung's older restaurants are loud, crowded, worn, filled with traditional décor and everyday character. Stackable plastic chairs and table cloths, Iconic red lanterns, these restaurants are casual, warm and vibrant hubs of the town. But when these places close, they are often replaced by overly sleek, minimalist coffee shops and bars, designed to appeal to younger visitors. These new venues are clean and well-marketed, but they strip away the cultural textures that once defined the village, slowly filling what was once a vibrant colourful community with monotone, sterile-like new businesses.
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This shift highlights the gap I want my imagined brand to address: a space that feels modern and inviting while still rooted in the traditions, stories and atmosphere of Sai Kung.
FROM CULTURE TO CONCEPT
My observations of Sai Kung's culture and community shaped a clear creative direction for the brand. At its heart, the identity is about community and continuity: a space that feels warm, inviting, and rooted in shared memories, while keeping Sai Kung's story alive for new generations.
The challenge, then, became a design one: how to translate this cultural richness into a visual identity that resonates with today's audiences - both locals and visitors.
PROJECT BRIEF:
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Objective:
Create a visual brand for the 'Harbour House', an imagined restaurant that preserves Sai Kung's cultural heritage and sense of community, while appealing to modern audiences. The identity should feel warm and inviting, rooted in shared memories, yet contemporary enough to resonate with today's visitors.
Tone/Personality:
Playful, authentic and rooted in community. The brand should evoke warmth and welcome, honouring the village's heritage while offering today's visitors a space to create new memories.
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Deliverables:​
1. Logo - A polished graphic in colour with text options
2. Brand board - colour palette, visual aids
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Building THE BRAND
With the concept of the brand defined, I began developing the brand identity into a full visual system. This section focuses on the creation of the core visual identity: logo, colour palette, and visual systems that define the restaurant's character.
INITIAL DESIGN IDEAS:
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At the core of my design approach was the tone/personality of the brand, defined in my project brief. I drew visual inspiration from elements around the town, like red lamps and ocean waves, to create playful visual assets.
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The brand should feel like a casual, warm space where family memories can be made.
Colour Palette:​
Yet again my design choices needed to reflect the playful, family-oriented community vibe, while staying rooted in Sai Kung culture. Many new restaurants in the area lean into minimal, Instagram-friendly aesthetics, often avoiding colour. I chose instead to embrace it. Through experimentation with values contrasts (darks vs. lights, pastel vs. neon), I developed a palette that feels dynamic yet grounded. The final colours include:
Main Palette:
Vibrant red - Similar to traditional signage and postboxes​
Ocean blue - Drawing from Sai Kung's surrounding nature​
Cement grey - Echoing many of the walls that make up the town
Pale yellow - A nod to the luminescent lights of the wet market
​Secondary Palette:
Deep red, blue and grey- Complementary colours in darker hues
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Patterns & TEXTUREs:
To communicate the history of the village in a reimagined design, I implemented textures from posters, iconic Hong Kong bamboo scaffolding, and other found objects to inspire brand visuals. Patterns were inspired by iconic Hong Kong stripes, a famous ice cream van local to the area, and other meaningful visual elements. I particularly drew inspiration from the feeling these found textures and patterns embodied- a feeling of a well loved and worn community, with many memories. Something full of history and clutter. This directed me to explore patterns that focused on detailed, busy designs, hand-drawn styles that reflected small-town, personal tones, and rough, old textures to reflect age and history.
Bringing it all together:
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With all of my gathered visuals, I began to draw from the elements I highlighted earlier in my process to design a logo. This included the red lanterns from the wet market, visuals of the ocean waves, boats, Chinese traditional utensils and more.
I began to develop these rough ideas, adding in colour experimentation. This helped me visualise the design from another perspective and helped me to refine the logo ideas, leading to the production of my final 2 options.
Typography:
Typography exploration drew inspiration from the hand-painted signage still found cross town, reimagined in a modern, adaptable form. I decided to create 2 versions of the logo, one in Cantonese and another in English, to be adaptable in various menus/signage. Both fonts are a handwritten, more playful tone, a nod to the traditional brands i the local area.
​​Logo Selection:
With my favourite 2 logo options, I was able to dive deeper into the meaning behind these designs, how it reflected the brand, and decided which one was most reflective of the design brief.​ I ultimately chose to go ahead with design 1, as I believed it best implemented relevant elements to not only the name 'Harbour House', but to Sai Kung itself. The overall impression given by this logo is more fun, whilst staying bold and recognisable as a standalone visual.
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Other Brand Elements:
With the logo established, I continued experimenting with the other visual elements I identified earlier in the project to continue to strengthen the brand's identity. I created brand assets that I could eventually use in brand menus, signage, social media and more.​​​​​​​
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COMPLETED BRAND Board:​
I developed a brand board that showcases the logo, along with possible colour applications of it. The full colour palette is displayed, along with visual aids to demonstrate the cultural ties as well as the intended atmosphere of the brand.
Final thoughts
The Harbour House is a project of love and lived history, told through design.​ I set about this project to "Create a brand identity for an imagined restaurant in Sai Kung"- one that celebrates the village's heritage, communicates its story, and connects with audiences across multiple touchpoints. I believe that the developed brand strongly leans into its' towns culture and effectively communicates the values of community and making memories.
For more design projects and examples, please scroll down to my applied design highlights:
APPLIED DESIGN EXPERIENCE
Explore the sections below for highlights, and click through for more detailed case studies.
Projects from my current role at Bayer are internal and confidential, so they cannot be displayed publicly.
Beyond my Personal Project, I have compiled a selection of professional design examples from earlier roles across brand, print, social media and video design.
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about me
I'm a designer with 5+ years' experience across brand, print, social media and video. My work focuses on translating ideas into engaging, accessible visual outputs.
Born and raised in Hong Kong to Filipina and Irish parents, with family across Australia, Canada, and Wales, I've grown up immersed in diverse cultures. Experiencing design internationally- from local advertising to the way global brands adapt messaging for local markets- has shown me how creative work shifts to reflect different values and audiences.
This perspective shapes my own approach: capturing identity and retelling stories through contemporary concepts, as reflected in my personal project, Sai Kung Harbour House.
