The Mantodea Institute is a fictitious interactive museum dedicated to the conservation and study of one of nature’s most extraordinary creatures- the praying mantis. Through immersive and visual exhibits, visitors can explore the fascinating and colorful lives of mantises, from their breathtaking and varied camouflage to their deadly hunting prowess.
My goal for this project was to inspire curiosity and deeper understanding through a cohesive, intuitive design system that translates complex scientific information into an engaging visual experience. By building a flexible brand guide and applying it consistently across layout, color, typography, and interaction patterns, I focused on creating an interface that feels approachable, easy to navigate, and visually compelling. The system supports storytelling around the mantis’s role in ecosystems worldwide while providing a clear foundation for scalable UX/UI design.
2025 - The Mantodea Institute
The Mantodea Institute logo began with an extensive sketching phase focused on observing and understanding the praying mantis from multiple angles. I spent time doodling different poses and forms, paying close attention to movement, posture, and what makes the mantis instantly recognizable. These early sketches were intentionally loose and textured, allowing me to explore ideas freely without locking into a specific outcome too early.
As the project moved from sketchbook to Adobe Illustrator, I ran into challenges translating that level of detail into a clean, scalable vector mark. Many of the first digital iterations felt overly complex or lost clarity at smaller sizes, which forced me to reassess my approach. Instead of trying to preserve every detail, I began focusing on silhouette, proportion, and negative space, using simplification as a way to strengthen clarity while still retaining character.
After the logo was finalized through several rounds of feedback and refinement, it started to shape the rest of the project in ways I didn’t fully expect. The simplicity of the glyph naturally pushed the brand toward a cleaner, more minimalistic direction, moving away from heavy texture and illustration and leaning more into space, structure, and clarity. That shift wasn’t something I planned from the beginning, but it felt like the right direction as the project developed. What started as a single logo ended up setting the tone for a much larger visual language, pushing the UX in a more minimal direction and moving the project beyond logo design and into a cohesive design system.
After completing the brand work, I moved into UX/UI design to see how the Mantodea Institute could translate into a clean, intuitive, and visually engaging homepage.
The UX/UI process started with low-fidelity wireframes to work through layout, hierarchy, and user flow before touching any high-fidelity design. Because the logo and brand guide were already established, those decisions naturally pushed the interface toward simplicity—clear sections, generous spacing, and a limited color palette. The wireframes helped me think through how a visitor would move through the homepage, from the hero section down to featured exhibits and upcoming events, while keeping the experience visually calm and easy to navigate.
Sketching and wireframing also made it easier to experiment with storytelling at the top of the page. I originally planned to use a video as the hero element, but after thinking through performance and usability constraints, I pivoted to an image slideshow. That change ended up fitting the brand better, giving the page more flexibility while still setting a strong visual tone. Working through these ideas at the wireframe level meant that when I moved into Figma, I already had a clear structure in place and could focus on refining components, interactions, and small details without losing sight of the overall experience.
