Award-winning educational packaging, built with full creative ownership.
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 systems supporting Accelerate Learning’s STEMscopes curriculum.
Across the engagement, I led K–12 packaging systems, storybooks, brochures, and editorial templates for a client roster that included Accelerate Learning, Kohl’s, Paradigm, RCMA, The Mission Continues, and Youthful Reflection.
The work for RCMA earned both an ADDY Award and a Merit Award.
Sole project owner. Full creative control.
Creative Direction
One system, built to scale across grade bands, states, and subjects.
ON THE K–12 PACKAGING SYSTEM
Grade-band differentiation needed to be immediate. A teacher or administrator should be able to identify K–2 from 6–8 at a glance. Color did that work. Type reinforced it. Every box in the system reads as part of the family.
ON THE OREGON VS. TEXAS SYSTEMS
Same architecture, different state identities. The discipline of maintaining a coherent system while adapting for distinct regional contexts is a design skill most logo portfolios don’t surface.
ON VISUAL SYSTEMS THAT SCALE
A packaging 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.
ON FULL CREATIVE AUTONOMY
Being named sole Project Owner on a complex multi-SKU packaging system at a nonprofit means the work rises and falls on your decisions. That accountability produces a different quality of focus.
Strategic Insight
Educational packaging is an underserved design space. Products children and educators handle every day, that set the tone for how learning feels, rarely get the creative investment given to consumer goods. These systems had to do two things at once: function with total clarity (grade-level navigation, curriculum identification, fast shelf recognition) and feel warm enough for a classroom rather than a warehouse. Holding that together across states, grade bands, and subjects is systems thinking, not just art direction.
Project Close
The best creative conditions come from clients who pair a clear mission with real trust. Go Do Good did both, and the work earned its recognition.