Hello World

Some brand universes are built to be larger than life—ambitious mythmaking projects beyond the imagination of any single person. Not Hello-World. Its co-founders Joy Yiu and Reyna Dashefsky prefer to operate on a smaller, more intimate scale; think ASCII doodles, grayscale textboxes, and chunky pixels on scroll.

Once upon a time, entering the Hello-World homepage would have taken you on a space odyssey across gleaming orbs of projects in orbit, a cheeky take on website launches.

Today the site’s latest redesign does retain some of these celestial bodies. A sprinkle of stars here, a smattering of planets there. But this time around there’s another accessory at the bottom-right corner: a bouncy 8-bit kitten purring for your full attention, picking up Y2K-inspired charms as it tumbles down the page.

Their virtual world has shrunk to the size of your palm in the same way we traded bulky desktop monitors for flat, shiny smartphones. Still, in both iterations the space serves as a callback to dial-up tones and simpler times. “Our own studio site is inspired by the early internet when things felt personal, playful, and authentic,” lead designer Reyna remarks. “The Tamagotchis are a little tribute to that era as well, and a reminder that good things grow with care.”

Hello-World 2.0 was no overnight feat. An Instagram post reveals that their rebrand has been more than 8 months in the making. Slowly but surely, even the smallest steps can lead the way to the most delightful surprises. Here’s how Reyna and Joy end up changing the digital world together one pixel at a time.

ABOUT THE STUDIO

Name: Hello-World

Founders: Reyna Dashefsky and Joy Yiu

Platforms: Squarespace, Shopify, and Webflow

Instagram: @hello_world.studio

Joy and Reyna are proud students of Standout Squarespace and Standout Shopify

Best of Both Worlds

“The studio itself started with a hello,” Reyna recounts. “I messaged Joy during the Standout Squarespace program, and we quickly clicked over our shared love of design and thoughtful creative work.”

Reyna: I know this seems very random lol, but I would love to just have someone to chat with who is in the same industry and also runs their own small business.

Reyna, who works from San Diego, California, hasn't always been a web designer and developer by trade. Her visual language emerged within the fashion industry, where she rubbed elbows with brands both big and small for a decade. It was the full-time job she landed at an LA-based startup that proved to be pivotal to her career; she realized she enjoyed the process of building their brand website immensely.

Squarespace allowed Reyna to stretch both sides of her brain, though there was only so much she could learn on her own. "I experimented a lot but found myself getting stuck on certain details and realized I didn't have a clear process at all," she admits. "I also felt like my skills weren't quite matching the level of design I wanted to create.

"That's when I decided I really needed to dive deeper, taking courses like Standout Squarespace to build my knowledge and really refine my approach."

Meanwhile, lead developer Joy fell down a similar rabbit hole as she hunkered down in Taiwan a few years ago. With nothing much to do in the middle of quarantine, she took an intro course on Squarespace design, which only made her more eager to find out what else she can customize on a website. "That's when I followed Rache of Squarestylist and asked a ton of questions while I was learning," she gushes. "Never looked back. That was [probably] one of the best things I did for my career."

Joy: I would definitely be interested in bouncing ideas off of each other and chat all things design… Why don't we set up a call next week or the following?

Two digital creatives living in two different timezones, united by sheer luck and devotion. They agreed to hop on Zoom calls twice a month to check on each other's progress with the curriculum. Then it was Joy who floated the idea of partnering for a web design studio when they both hit a creative block two months later. "I had approached her and said, 'Hey, I wanna do this thing. No need to get back to me immediately.' Thirty minutes later, she's like, 'I'm in.'"

Collaboration came easy to them despite never having met in person. Now logged in from Vancouver, Joy chalks this up to their core values inspiring a renewed sense of confidence to take on bigger projects. "It was really cool because Reyna had skills that I didn't," she adds. "We really just meshed our skills together, built Hello-World, and here we are today." It's no surprise that they've since taken their virtual meetups to the real world. You'll see them clinking glasses over good food and great company once a year in New York City, just in time for Squarespace's Circle Day.

A Byte of Everything

Hello-World's signature style is a study in contrasts. Nothing quite illustrates this better than their new wordmark — Hello in sans serif, World in cursive. One side reveals an ode to form, the other an homage to flow. This studio takes no interest in smoothing out these contradictions. Instead, creative energy ripples through the logo to reveal the binary that coexists within their fundamental code.

Such a layered approach to aesthetics requires an appetite for learning, which they tend to satisfy through their international travels. Reyna points out that Japan in particular caught their eye for how its design culture can be both minimalist and playful. It's hard not to love the place and the way it embodies the past and the future all at once. "I think that kind of push and pull tension really excites us," Reyna explains. They eventually found their brand somewhere in between high-speed bullet trains and tactile fax machines.

You could say there was a similar undercurrent to the early internet, back in the late '90s and early '00s, when the new had yet to supersede the old. Remember when your family computer—bless that hunk of junk—wrestled with telephone coils for the modem? Technology was worth the wait. Hello-World wants you to hold onto that, to tinker with the gray area in cybercore software windows. To capture that brief moment of free-wheeling expression before the self-consciousness hits.

In today's social networks where algorithms leave little room for authenticity and spontaneity, the unapologetic references to MySpace and indie blogs resonate.

Assembling Digital Collages

The initial launch of Hello-World was no rocket science. Like many design studios, they found their first few clients among friends and family. Joy remembers how these projects propelled them into more exciting opportunities through word of mouth. "You know, they would say, 'Hey, I really like what you do on this project,' and they'd come to us and say what they want to do. So that was really fun for us."

Reyna and Joy have traversed a vast range of industries ever since, building on a body of work that is just as eclectic as their design sensibilities. One thing remains constant among all their portfolio pieces: a rare ability to blend even the most disparate objects and ideas into avant-garde collages.

Many brands have entrusted their trinkets and troves to Hello-World's capable hands. Some of them seek the restraint of minimalist website architecture. Take Molly Kidd (2025), which frames interior design layouts against a linen white backdrop to display select books, furnishings, and spaces like museum objects. Memor (2024) sculpts a subdued sanctuary for a ceramicist and her contemporary curiosities: mosaic vases, siren combs, abalone dishes, candleholders, antique charms, and knick-knacks from the depths of a mermaid's secret grotto. Meyer Manx (2025) showcases classic buggies that traverse undulating Italian coasts, jagged Swiss cliffs, bone-dry Mojave dunes—all the way to the moon and back. Then there's Agio (2025) with its rounded corners and typefaces to facilitate easy-going conversations around weatherproof outdoor lounges.

This creative duo can also approach other projects with a sense of play when the client brief calls for it. For instance, Huey Lightshop (2024-2025) incorporates hand-drawn elements to illustrate light fixtures suspended from the ceiling, flushed to the wall, or placed on the bedside table. Little Amps Coffee (2025) bursts into life with laid-back doodles, pops of color, and jittery jams for the daily grind. CHANI (2025), arguably their most experimental build to date, reads like a digital scrapbook of horoscopes, birth charts, card decks, and collectibles dedicated to wide-eyed astrology enthusiasts.

There's no idea too big, no detail too small for this hands-on studio. They can immerse themselves in any virtual world so long as the people in business are pleasant to work with. "I think the ideal client to us is someone who is respectful, communicative, trust our process, and you know, just is very kind and friendly to us," Joy elaborates. "It really makes all the difference for someone to kinda check all of those boxes."

Ever wondered how they manage to do it all? "It's definitely been a lot of trial and error, and we're still refining as we go," Reyna says about their service packages. So far they have arranged a menu of offerings that clients tend to request. "We also put ourselves in their shoes to consider what would be most useful at different stages of business." Their starting prices are based on how much time projects usually need, from landing pages to semi-custom sites to custom e-commerce builds.

All in a Day's Work

A typical day in Hello-World depends on where you are in the work week.

Reyna walks through the theme days they established for more consistency within the studio. Mondays and Wednesdays hold the bulk of client work: designing, developing, managing, and marketing. Tuesdays and Thursdays are reserved for client calls. Then Fridays are CEO days, when they find the time to step back and trace the trajectory of their business. This system makes it easier to slot various tasks into their schedule.

"When we first started our studio, our days felt scattered and a bit chaotic," she confesses. "I think creating themes for each day has been a game changer, and it's definitely brought more clarity and momentum to us."

For two people who have been taking it one day at a time, it may seem surreal to look back and see how far they've come. "It just feels really nice when people see our work and say, 'Hey, that's really cool. This is a Hello-World project!' I honestly didn't even know what that meant until people, you know, would mention that," Joy says. Their collaborations with Memor and Huey Lightshop—not to mention the Hello-World site itself—have been featured prominently in global design libraries such as Awwwards, eCommerce Design Awards (EDA), Siteinspire, and Site of Sites.

They're both grateful, but they don't plan to spend their days chasing the next award. Rather, Reyna looks forward to expanding their design lexicon towards industries they have yet to explore like film, music, and nonprofit. "Really, we are always drawn to creative, purpose-led work across multiple fields."

Joy couldn't help but agree. At the end of the day, "We just really care that we continue producing very quality work, things that we like doing. And for others to resonate with our work, that really means a lot to us."