Sam Luo is a designer and the founder of LYH Studio on YouTube, where his tutorials on InDesign and other Adobe apps have amassed more than six million views. Sam is speaking at the The InDesign Conference 2026, which takes place online December 1–4, 2026. We thought it would be fun to get to know him better with some Q&A.
How did InDesign first become part of your creative life? What were you working on, and what made you want to learn more?
InDesign first came into my life when I was creating my first architectural portfolio to apply for internships. I needed a tool that would allow me to design something that showcased everything I had worked so hard to achieve throughout school, and InDesign was the perfect fit for that.
What made me want to learn more was realizing that InDesign is just as much of a design tool as Illustrator or Photoshop. How you curate information and showcase it to others is, in itself, an act of design, and that was something I wanted to continue improving.
What inspired you to start creating InDesign tutorials and sharing what you were learning with others?
I started my channel because I wanted to help others who were going through school. When I was in school, design thinking was taught alongside many other skills, but it often felt like professors assumed you already knew the design software.
I was lucky enough to meet a classmate who was really good with the Adobe apps at the time, and he became my teacher. I wanted to do the same for others who were struggling; to help them learn these tools and feel more confident in their own design process.
Are there any design principles or techniques you find yourself returning to, regardless of the type of project you’re working on?
I think the one design principle I always come back to is leaving ample negative space on the page. It has become a big part of how my personal style has evolved. I’m a big fan of clean, modern, yet bold designs, which is often a difficult balance to achieve.
On a separate note, one technique I’ve been obsessed with is adding a “grain” texture to images I edit in Photoshop before bringing them into InDesign. It adds a nice editorial texture and helps unify different assets that I’ve combined together.
At the upcoming InDesign Conference, you’ll demonstrate a workflow that starts with AI-generated design ideas and ends with a polished editorial layout in InDesign. What do you hope attendees will take away from your session?
I hope to showcase that AI is a great way to generate ideas quickly, but at the end of the day, it is still the designer who makes the critical decisions.
Only you know your project best — your client, your goals, and the overall context. Ultimately, it is still up to the designer to guide the overall creative direction. AI is a powerful tool, but it works best when it augments the designer’s process rather than replacing it.
If you could take a year-long, fully paid sabbatical to learn something completely new, what would you choose, and why?
Amazing question! Totally unrelated but right now, I would love to learn how to sing well.
I love going to karaoke and singing with friends, but it would be amazing to understand how to better articulate sounds, expand my vocal range, and improve my technique. I think singing is a way to express yourself, similar to design.
This article was last modified on October 22, 2026
This article was first published on October 22, 2026
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