One packaging system covering kindergarten through high school, two subjects and two states, sortable from ten feet away.
Role
Art direction · Packaging design · Editorial design
Client
Go Do Good, Inc. · for Accelerate Learning
Industry
Education · Nonprofit · Publishing
Deliverables
K-12 packaging systems · Dielines and structure · Grade band color system · Retail and classroom display
Sole project owner. Full creative control.
Challenge
One packaging system had to cover kindergarten through high school across science and math, stay instantly sortable in a stockroom, and still look like it belonged in a classroom rather than a warehouse.
Approach
Science runs warm, math runs cool, and every box states its grade at ten feet so a teacher finds the right one without reading a word.
Outcome
Science and math for Oregon and Texas, holding together on a shelf as one family.
Go Do Good · Selected clients
Accelerate Learning, Go Do Good and STEMscopes. The curriculum brand, the firm, and the product line the packaging had to serve.
Go Do Good is a nonprofit design firm that makes work for brands worth backing. They brought me on as freelance art director and sole project owner for the NGSS science and math packaging supporting Accelerate Learning's STEMscopes curriculum.
Products children and educators handle every day, the ones that set the tone for how learning feels, rarely get the creative investment given to consumer goods. These had to function with total clarity and still feel warm enough for a classroom.
Kindergarten and first grade. The letter or numeral fills the panel, so a teacher reading a stack from across a room never has to squint.
The dieline. A QR code and Scan and Explore sit on every panel, because the print is a doorway to the digital curriculum.
The display version. Same identity, restructured so it opens flat and holds materials a teacher pulls from all year.
Third grade, box and open display together. One artwork, two structures, no redraw.
The quieter third grade treatment. Elephants in silhouette, the numeral doing the identifying, and nothing competing with it.
Third through eighth plus Physical, Earth and Space, and Life Science on one fixture. This is the test the system was designed for.
Texas, in a lab. Biology, eighth grade and third grade lined up, and the color tells you the band before the words do.
Sole project owner · Full creative control
Sole project owner on a multi-SKU system means the work rises and falls on your decisions.
I had full creative control of the NGSS line end to end. Creative director Meredith Warner. Art direction shared with Kevin Lee on parts of the line. Client, Accelerate Learning.
Texas · The color system
Three bands, six values, one typeface. K to 5 saffron and gold, 6 to 8 terracotta and sunflower, high school watermelon and pumpkin spice.
Texas · Science, lower grades
Kindergarten through second. Every cover is its own scene, and the grade character is always the same size in the same place.
Third through fifth. The subject art shifts from plants to planets while the structure underneath never moves.
Texas · Upper grades
Sixth through eighth, on terracotta. Older band, hotter color, and the science gets less cute without getting cold.
High school. Physics, Chemistry and Biology take a letter instead of a number, which is the one place the system changes its own rule and gets away with it.
Math Nation · K to 8
Math, on a classroom table. Same structure as science, swung to green and teal so the two subjects never get mixed up in a stockroom.
Grade band differentiation had to be immediate. A teacher or administrator should be able to identify K to 2 from 6 to 8 at a glance. Color did that work, type reinforced it, and every box in the system reads as part of the family.
A system this large only works when every decision can repeat, flex and stay recognizable across grade bands, formats and audiences. The strength is not one box. It is the system holding together at scale.
Third through fifth math. A robot, a kite and a rocket, each one carrying the maths on its own front.
Fifth grade math as an open display, with Kit, Print and Digital called out on the inside wall. The box explains its own contents before a teacher unpacks it.
Sixth through eighth math. A racket, a monument, a bicycle, and an equation set right into the panel.
Algebra 1, closed and open. High school math takes a letter and a number, and the display wall still calls out Kit, Print and Digital.
The strength is not one box. It is the system holding at scale.
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