Each year, SAP hosts UI5con, an conference held in Germany, for developers to learn and connect. I was responsible for the complete visual direction of the event, including brand direction, asset management, and website design. As a Vancouver-based designer, this project required proactive communication and organization.
In this project, my contributions consisted of creating the brand direction, website design, and print/digital assets. As the only designer on this project, I was responsible for explaining my design decisions, gathering feedback early, and iterating quickly and mindfully.
Individual
4 months
Assets by me, editing by Sebastian Moreno
To optimize budgets and create timeless materials, it was important to create a design that drew from the previous year while still conveying innovation. In my design, I utilised the existing typography and visual elements while applying Google's Material Design to introduce an analogous colour palette. The idea of this palette was to create tone-based surfaces, providing high accessibility. My goal was to convey a modern, innovative, and timeless brand.
The images above illustrate the change from UI5con 2022 (designed by Victoria Maslova) to my version in 2023. While the images above show the difference in identities, the posters below show how I brought the two themes together in order to create reusable print materials.
Drawing inspiration from Apple, I created a went for an adaptive layout for screen responsiveness. I used the stark accessibility plugin on Figma to denote colour contrasts across every element of my site. The dark-mode theming allowed my design to have exceptional contrast ratios, and I am proud to note that the site design is 100% accessible.
See the live site, here.
One of the elements that makes UI5con so great is the people. After speaking with some of the conference's stakeholders, I learnt that 75% of participants come every year. With that in mind, I wanted to have people at the center of this year's design, communicating the scale and impact of the event. I also added subtle gradient movements in the background to bring life into the components.
This was the first project that I completed as a User Interface Designer at SAP. Here, I learned to:
In this project, my developer was in Montreal, Canada, while our project manager was in Walldorf, Germany. Working across various time zones taught me how to prioritize tasks and make workflows easier for my colleagues.
As the only designer on this team, I had to be very confident in my design decisions. This is something I have struggled with in the past, but through intentional decision-making, I was able to justify all of my choices and execute a design my whole team supported.
One of the biggest challenges of remote work (especially when you're the only colleague working in a different time zone), is to stay motivated. In this project, I learned to be kind to myself, knowing when I needed a walk outside or when I needed to schedule a 30-minute uninterrupted workflow.