Brilliance Exposed

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)

TIMELINE

January 2026 - June 2026

ROLE

Led Web Designer

Meeting Facilitator

TOOLS

Figma

FigJam

HTML / CSS / JavaScript

TEAM

Cindy Zhou

Isabelle Wang

Jasmine Lou

Wendy Liao

Alice Shen

Alisa Liao

/ About the project

Designing the digital home for an international photographic exhibition celebrating Black brilliance in STEAM.

Brilliance Exposed is a cultural initiative by Alexis Dixon that honors Black-presenting professionals leading science, technology, engineering, arts, and math — through striking black-and-white portraiture. The exhibition has secured commitments from Detroit's Charles Wright Museum and galleries in Paris, with Tiffany & Co. hosting a reception at its flagship store. Our seven-person Design for America team at UCSD partnered directly with the founder to design and build the exhibition's first-ever website from the ground up. I serve as the lead web designer, established the brand guidelines driving all design work, facilitate weekly team meetings, and act as the primary liaison between our team and the client.

/ About the project

Designing the digital home for an international photographic exhibition celebrating Black brilliance in STEAM.

Brilliance Exposed is a cultural initiative by Alexis Dixon that honors Black-presenting professionals leading science, technology, engineering, arts, and math — through striking black-and-white portraiture. The exhibition has secured commitments from Detroit's Charles Wright Museum and galleries in Paris, with Tiffany & Co. hosting a reception at its flagship store. Our seven-person Design for America team at UCSD partnered directly with the founder to design and build the exhibition's first-ever website from the ground up. I serve as the lead web designer, established the brand guidelines driving all design work, facilitate weekly team meetings, and act as the primary liaison between our team and the client.

An exhibition with international reach — but no functioning website to carry the story.

Brilliance Exposed had museum commitments, a Tiffany & Co. sponsorship, and a growing collection of powerful portraits and interviews — but no working website. The previous site was down and inaccessible. We weren't redesigning anything; we were building from zero. The core design challenge: how do you create a digital experience that carries the emotional weight of a physical photographic exhibition — while supporting storytelling, merchandise, event promotion, and donations in one cohesive platform?

A competitive audit of 10 exhibition sites shaped every design decision before we touched a wireframe.

We conducted two targeted audits. The first analyzed five traditional exhibition sites — documenting navigation patterns, image presentation strategies, and donation flows. The second examined five innovative immersive experiences — mapping how they used video, motion, and storytelling-driven layouts to deepen engagement. The key insight across all 10: art-first layouts with minimal UI chrome, high-resolution imagery as primary content, and purposeful interactivity that served the narrative rather than decorated it. No competitor was combining portraiture, video interviews, and community storytelling in a single cohesive digital experience. That gap became our design opportunity.

Three user personas shaped a seven-section information architecture.

Designing the digital home for an international photographic exhibition celebrating Black brilliance in STEAM.

We defined the site structure around three distinct audiences: the Casual Explorer (25–35, needs to be hooked in 10 seconds, browses on mobile), the Dedicated Art Lover (35–50, seeks depth and narrative), and the Community Supporter (30–45, motivated by mission and impact). Each of the seven core sections — Home, About, Gallery (Portraits & Videos), Events, Shop, Contact, and Donate — was mapped to these personas' specific needs. Gallery separates Portraits from Videos for the Art Lover's deep-dive access. Events surfaces practical details prominently for the Casual Explorer. Donate connects directly to impact messaging for the Community Supporter.

Brilliance Exposed is a cultural initiative by Alexis Dixon that honors Black-presenting professionals leading science, technology, engineering, arts, and math — through striking black-and-white portraiture. The exhibition has secured commitments from Detroit's Charles Wright Museum and galleries in Paris, with Tiffany & Co. hosting a reception at its flagship store. Our seven-person Design for America team at UCSD partnered directly with the founder to design and build the exhibition's first-ever website from the ground up. I serve as the lead web designer, established the brand guidelines driving all design work, facilitate weekly team meetings, and act as the primary liaison between our team and the client.

Establishing a brand foundation and evolving from wireframes to high-fidelity design.

Designing the digital home for an international photographic exhibition celebrating Black brilliance in STEAM.

I established the brand guidelines — typography scale, color palette, and layout principles — grounding every visual decision in an art-first, accessible, story-driven approach. Building on this foundation, I designed a component-based design system in Figma to ensure consistency across seven contributors — standardizing reusable elements so that every team member designs from the same source of truth. From initial wireframes focused on content hierarchy and navigation flow, we iterated into high-fidelity screens that balance the emotional gravity of the portraits with clean, functional UI for commerce and event management.

Brilliance Exposed is a cultural initiative by Alexis Dixon that honors Black-presenting professionals leading science, technology, engineering, arts, and math — through striking black-and-white portraiture. The exhibition has secured commitments from Detroit's Charles Wright Museum and galleries in Paris, with Tiffany & Co. hosting a reception at its flagship store. Our seven-person Design for America team at UCSD partnered directly with the founder to design and build the exhibition's first-ever website from the ground up. I serve as the lead web designer, established the brand guidelines driving all design work, facilitate weekly team meetings, and act as the primary liaison between our team and the client.

Bridging design and development as the team's only designer-developer.

Designing the digital home for an international photographic exhibition celebrating Black brilliance in STEAM.

On most design teams, you hand off a Figma file and hope for the best. On this project, I own both sides — designing responsive layouts across desktop, tablet, and mobile breakpoints in Figma, and writing the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that brings them to life. Every design decision I make accounts for implementation: component reusability, responsive behavior, and image loading performance for high-resolution portraits. I've already built an initial prototype to validate layout feasibility before the team finalizes design.

Brilliance Exposed is a cultural initiative by Alexis Dixon that honors Black-presenting professionals leading science, technology, engineering, arts, and math — through striking black-and-white portraiture. The exhibition has secured commitments from Detroit's Charles Wright Museum and galleries in Paris, with Tiffany & Co. hosting a reception at its flagship store. Our seven-person Design for America team at UCSD partnered directly with the founder to design and build the exhibition's first-ever website from the ground up. I serve as the lead web designer, established the brand guidelines driving all design work, facilitate weekly team meetings, and act as the primary liaison between our team and the client.

Reflection

Designing the digital home for an international photographic exhibition celebrating Black brilliance in STEAM.

Coordinating seven people with varying technical fluency taught me that facilitation is itself a design skill — structuring agendas, creating presentation plans, and breaking work into sections each person can own are information architecture problems in disguise. Building from scratch without any existing site data made the upfront research phase critical; a well-structured competitive audit can substitute for analytics when starting from zero. As we move into usability testing and final development, I'm focused on delivering designs that are both visually compelling and technically implementable — because I'll be the one writing the code.

Brilliance Exposed is a cultural initiative by Alexis Dixon that honors Black-presenting professionals leading science, technology, engineering, arts, and math — through striking black-and-white portraiture. The exhibition has secured commitments from Detroit's Charles Wright Museum and galleries in Paris, with Tiffany & Co. hosting a reception at its flagship store. Our seven-person Design for America team at UCSD partnered directly with the founder to design and build the exhibition's first-ever website from the ground up. I serve as the lead web designer, established the brand guidelines driving all design work, facilitate weekly team meetings, and act as the primary liaison between our team and the client.

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