Educational Packaging · Brand Identity
Direct and produce award-winning educational design across multiple curriculum systems for a mission-driven nonprofit.
Role
Art Direction · Packaging Design · Editorial Design
Client
Go Do Good, Inc. · Freelance
Industry
Education · Nonprofit · Publishing
Deliverables
K-12 Educational Packaging · Storybooks · Brochures · Email Templates · Brand Identity
Collaborators
Meredith Warner, Creative Director · Kevin Lee, Art Director
Overview
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.
Go Do Good · Clients
NGSS · Packaging
Client: Accelerate Learning. Art Director and Project Owner: Andrew McKee.
Sole project owner. Full creative control.
Creative Direction
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 do not 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.
Color System · Packaging
Client: Accelerate Learning. Creative Director: Meredith Warner. Project Owner: Andrew McKee.
Strategic Insight
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 systems had to do two things at once: function with total clarity, grade-level navigation, curriculum identification, fast shelf recognition, and still 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.
Art Director · Graphics
Client: Accelerate Learning. Creative Director: Meredith Warner. Art Directors: Andrew McKee and Kevin Lee.
Project Close
As Art Director I had real room to shape the educational packaging and curriculum work, alongside a team that took the mission seriously. These were science and math materials headed for K-12 classrooms, and work that ends up in front of students sets its own standard.