Alana McFarlane Design

Research → Story → Visual Systems

Design as Collaborative Intelligence.

I work with organizations tackling complex challenges in health, social impact, and the built environment—embedding in the problem-solving process, translating research into story, and creating the visual systems that make difficult ideas accessible.

I work in the spaces between—where research meets lived experience, where complexity resists simplification, where understanding emerges slowly across many voices.

My practice is about making patterns visible. Listening for what's trying to become coherent. Translating not to reduce, but to reveal structure.

Organizations come to me when their work is hard to see. When years of community engagement need a spine. When evidence and story haven't yet found each other. When the diagram is not decoration but the decision itself.

I wade in early—before the brief, before the certainty. I stay through the disorienting middle. I help shape how the question gets asked, which changes what becomes answerable.

Case Studies ︎︎︎

UBC Third Quadrant Design

Red maple leaf on abstract molecular background

Radon Atlas of Canada

Three circles in pink, yellow and light purple circle overlap on an abstract dark background

National SCI Care Strategy

Alana McFarlane Design

Design as Collaborative Intelligence.I work with organizations tackling complex challenges in health, social impact, and the built environment—embedding in the problem-solving process, translating research into story, and creating the visual systems that make difficult ideas accessible.

Design as Collaborative Intelligence.

I work with organizations tackling complex challenges in health, social impact, and the built environment—embedding in the problem-solving process, translating research into story, and creating the visual systems that make difficult ideas accessible.