Overview
Mālama Maui: The Land We Hold is a collaborative documentary and interactive website created as part of a global storytelling project at UNC Chapel Hill. The project explores culture, environmental issues, and community resilience in Maui in the wake of the 2023 Lāhainā wildfires.
Working in multidisciplinary teams, we produced a fully integrated digital experience combining long-form reporting, documentary film, photography, and interactive design. The final outcome is an immersive website that brings together multiple forms of storytelling into one cohesive platform.
Role & Team
Role: Designer (Interactive & Culture Team)
Focus: Brand Style Guide, Story Graphics
Tools: Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, Procreate
Timeline: Spring 2026
This project was developed in collaboration with a team of reporters, videographers, photographers, designers, and developers. Each role contributed a different piece of the final experience:
Project Goals
- Create a cohesive and respectful visual identity for the project
- Support storytelling through clear and engaging design
- Build a unified experience across multiple forms of media
- Collaborate effectively within a multidisciplinary team
Brand Style Guide
A major part of my role was developing the project’s brand style guide, ensuring visual consistency across the entire website and across all story teams.
The process involved extensive ideation and collaboration, particularly when defining the color palette and typography. We explored multiple directions before finding something visually cohesive, culturally respectful, and accessible. Because this was a collaborative project, it was important to balance team feedback and refine the visual direction until it aligned across disciplines.
The final style guide includes:
- Typography system designed for clarity, hierarchy, and tone
- Color palette and color rules inspired by natural elements such as land and ocean, with an emphasis on muted, grounded tones
- Guidelines for Hawaiian diacritics, ensuring accurate and respectful representation of language
- User personas to guide design decisions and audience understanding
- Video style guide, including lower thirds, captions, and visual consistency across documentary content
Color and typography were developed alongside the logo to ensure a cohesive and unified brand system. Accessibility was also a key consideration, with attention to contrast and readability across all design elements.
Story Graphics: Culture & Voyaging
As part of the culture story team, I created interactive graphics focused on the significance of voyaging and the canoe in Hawaiian culture.
These visuals were designed to support the written and video storytelling by making complex ideas more accessible and engaging. One key concept explored was the relationship between people, land, ocean, and navigation, often expressed through the idea that “the canoe is the island and the island is the canoe.”
