Chaos to Clarity: Designing for an Unpredictable World.

UX Y’all is the annual conference hosted by the Triangle UXPA, a North Carolina chapter of the User Experience Professionals Association.

The conference is fully planned and operated by a team of volunteers. It was started in 2018 to further support and highlight the Triangle’s community of UXers.

Role
Contract Designer

Client & Industry
UX Y’all; Non-profit

Tools
Adobe Photoshop
Procreate (iPad software)

Timeline
April - September 2025

I was hired on as a Contract Designer to create incredible visuals for UX Y’all’s 8th annual conference.

It was a sold out conference and hundreds attended.
View the metrics below:

✅ 337+ attendees
✅ 4 keynotes
✅ 19 sessions
✅ 23 presenters
✅ 20 sponsors
✅ 39 volunteers
✅ 1 birthday 🎂
And…
✅ 1 false alarm 🚨

Over the course of 4 months, using the designated color palette, I sketched, iterated, and designed these visuals into fruition.

Below is the overall process of my work and how I arrived at the final set of visual design pieces. Enjoy.

Sleuthing. Detective Work. Red Strings & Cork Boards.

Mystery can cause chaos and as UX Designers, we strive to solve and uncover the mysteries with user research, UX design, methodologies, and everything else in between.

Stars. Comets. Space. Planets & Astronauts.

As Designers, we love to create things out of the void. We may not wholly understand where it comes from or how it comes to be, but when it happens - we take the primordial chaos of it all and transform it into magical clarity.

I wanted to create a paper cut-out style, where the lines  are sharp and angular, expressing the dichotomy to the fluidness and organic material of outer space

Nature, at its core, is chaos personified. Even under the watchful eyes of experienced park rangers, chaos will happen, it’s a matter of when and how.

As Designers, we can be the "park rangers" of our work. We do our best to keep a watchful eye and assess our digital surroundings for impending danger, but like nature, design can be unpredictable.

Fire. Crocodiles. Survival.
Man vs. The Wild Nature.

The Final Concept.

Fire. Crocodiles. Survival.
Man vs. The Wild Nature.

After discussing the three possible choices, UX Y’all conference coordinators selected ‘Man vs. The Wild Nature’ as they believed this option best represented the unpredictability of wilderness.

The Iteration Process

Lurking gators and poison ivy representing the unpredictability of Chaos; while swaying hammocks, fluttering butterflies, warm campfires, and massive fluffy cumulus clouds represent the calmness of Clarity.

Creating iterations of all that makes Nature as we know it was an exciting process. Scroll to see what I made and what ultimately made it to the conference!

Poster Iterations

Color Blocking

T-Shirt Iterations

Starting with the rough iteration of simple lines and zero color, I created an array of options to choose from, from 0% orange color blocking to 100% full color blocking.

As visual designers, we’re generally taught and advised that every illustration or design we create must be done with intention and with a solid reasoning of why.

Well… when designers get into a groove, we create whatever comes to mind first or throw spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks - regardless of whether the design makes sense or not.

My decisions to increasingly color block did not have a reasoning behind it except I thought it looked interesting.