Jared Lebel
Captured by Pano Media
Embracing Disorientation
In this talk, Jared Lebel explores disorientation as a recurring force in both life and creative practice. Opening with a deliberately overwhelming audiovisual sequence, he invites the audience to sit with confusion rather than resist it. For Jared, that feeling is familiar.
From childhood upheaval to addiction, recovery, creative ambition, burnout, and a late ADHD diagnosis, his story traces a nonlinear path through music, design, entrepreneurship, corporate leadership, and collapse. Each time he felt lost, he tried to outrun the discomfort. Each time, disorientation returned, asking to be listened to instead of suppressed.
Jared shares how sobriety, design school, founding a studio, leading a global brand, and eventually walking away from it all were not linear progressions, but responses to internal signals he had long ignored. When burnout and mental health challenges forced him to stop performing stability, he began using personal creative experiments as a way to process identity, neurodivergence, and his complicated relationship with the design industry.
Through gritty poster projects, self-reflection, and difficult career pivots, Jared reframes disorientation not as failure, but as information. Rather than chasing constant clarity, he proposes recalibration. Instead of striving for perfect alignment, he suggests accepting that uncertainty is part of growth.
He closes with a call to embrace the moments when things fall apart. Disorientation, when faced honestly, can become a compass.
jaredlebel.ca
@lebelator
