Open to new projects · Denmark
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Travel web design · Front-end · 2026

Hideaway

A curated travel site for South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and China. Instead of thousands of listings, a short atlas of remarkable places, each visited in person by one of four local curators.

Open live site ↗
Ginzan OnsenYamagata, JapanPicked by Yuki TanakaOpen place ↗ Rakkojae SeoulSeoul, South KoreaPicked by Seo-yeon ParkOpen place ↗ A-Mei Tea HouseJiufen, TaiwanPicked by Mei-lin ChenOpen place ↗
Role
Concept, UI design, front-end
Tools
Figma, Claude Code
Scope
9 pages, desktop & mobile
Content
20+ real places, 4 curators
Hideaway home page in a browser window and a hotel page on a phone

The story

Big booking sites show every hotel in a city, ranked by an algorithm and buried in reviews. People who want something special spend weeks looking for the few places that are worth the trip.

Hideaway works the other way round. It is a small atlas of hotels, restaurants and experiences in East Asia, and every place has a person behind it: one of four curators who lives in that country and has been there. Visitors don't search a database, they read a recommendation.

I wanted it to feel like a travel magazine you can book from. Large photography carries the mood, an italic serif sets the headlines, and a quiet palette of deep brown and warm beige lets the places speak.

4countries
4local curators
20+hand-picked places
5moods to browse by

The idea

Curators, not algorithms

Seo-yeon Park, Yuki Tanaka, Mei-lin Chen and Wei Zhang each cover one country. Their faces appear on every place they picked.

Browse by mood

Sleep, Eat & Drink, Feel, Explore and Wonder. People choose how they want a trip to feel, then filter by country.

Plan with a person

A four-step planner ends with a first itinerary from the curator, instead of a booking form.

Real places

Every place and photo is real, taken from Wikimedia Commons under free licences and credited on its own page.

How a trip is planned

The planner turns a vague wish into a first itinerary in four short steps.

  1. Step 1

    Destination

    Pick one of four countries and the travel dates.

  2. Step 2

    Travel style

    Slow and calm, food-led, nature or culture, with the number of guests.

  3. Step 3

    Curator

    Meet the curator for that country: trips planned, rating, regions and languages.

  4. Step 4

    First itinerary

    A day-by-day plan with places from the atlas, ready to adjust together.

Design system

A magazine palette: deep cocoa for the nav and footer, warm paper for the pages, white cards for places.

Cocoa#311C18
Paper#F9F2ED
White#FFFFFF
Ink#000000
Forest#2F6A5A
Headlines · Cormorant Garamond Italic

Extraordinary places await.

Text · Inter Light

Every place personally visited by one of our four curators.

Key screens

The pages a traveller moves through, from finding a place to planning the trip.

hideawa-xmbf.vercel.app/place
Podo Hotel place page with gallery and key facts
01

Place page

A gallery, the facts people look for first (location, type, price, best time to go) and a story written by the curator.

hideawa-xmbf.vercel.app/plan-trip
Trip planner with four steps
02

Trip planner

Four steps with a progress bar that keeps the chosen country, dates and guests in view.

hideawa-xmbf.vercel.app/curators
Curators page: four people, four countries
03

Curators

“Four people. Four countries. Every place visited in person.” Each portrait opens that curator's profile.

hideawa-xmbf.vercel.app/curator
Curator profile with stats, regions and languages
04

Curator profile

Trips planned, rating, regions and languages build trust in the person. One button starts a trip with them.

hideawa-xmbf.vercel.app/category
Sleep category with hotel cards filtered by country
05

Browse by mood

Places grouped by how they feel, with a country filter and price per night.

Around the site

The home page and the quieter pages that make it feel like a real service.

Search bar and five mood tiles
Search & moodsWhere, when and trip type in one bar, then five mood tiles with real photos.
Featured place Podo Hotel in an oval frame
Featured placeOne place in a soft oval frame, with its curator and a short story.
Recently added places carousel with prices
Recently addedCards with location, rating and price, filtered by category.
Photo grid and the Ready to travel differently call to action
Photo gridA mosaic of places and one last invitation: plan a trip or meet the curators.
About page: It began with a notebook
About“It began with a notebook”: the story of the atlas over a garden pavilion.
Account page with saved places
AccountSaved places, upcoming trips and journeys, with a friendly empty state.

On a phone

Every page adapts to small screens. The menu collapses, galleries scroll sideways and buttons grow to a comfortable size.

Hideaway home on a phone
Home
Podo Hotel page on a phone
Place page
Trip planner on a phone
Trip planner

Decisions & details

The parts that took the most thought.

Challenge

A short list has to feel complete

What I did

Five moods and a country filter make 20+ places feel like a full atlas, and every empty state suggests where to go next.

Challenge

Trust without reviews

What I did

Each place carries its curator's face and words, and each curator has a profile with their trips and languages.

Challenge

Real content, real credits

What I did

All photos are real places under free licences, credited on a dedicated page, so nothing looks like a stock template.

See it liveOpen hideawa-xmbf.vercel.app ↗Browse the places, meet the curators and plan a trip in four steps.

What I did

  • Concept & contentShaped the idea of a curated atlas with four curators, wrote the structure and copy, and chose real places and photos.
  • UI designDesigned the site in Figma: layout, typography, palette and components for 9 pages.
  • Front-endBuilt it in HTML, CSS and vanilla JavaScript with Claude Code. Places, curators and itineraries come from data files.
  • LaunchPublished on Vercel, with a photo credits page for every image.
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I reply within a day Based in Denmark · CET Open to product, web & apps Remote or on-site in Europe UI / UX · Web · Mobile Ukrainian · Polish · English

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  • I reply within a day
  • Based in Denmark · CET
  • Open to product, web & apps
  • Remote or on-site in Europe
  • UI / UX · Web · Mobile
  • Ukrainian · Polish · English
© 2026 Alina YakuninaPodo Hotel photo: Htwzzz, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsDesigned in Figma, built in code