Schoolyard Roots
The mission of Schoolyard Roots is to create a network of school gardens that will build healthier communities, engage students in learning, and increase access to healthy, sustainably-grown food in Alabama. I was on contract with Schoolyard Roots (formerly Druid City Garden Project) for about three years as their graphic designer, working on all digital and print media.
The Curriculum
My biggest project was laying out six curriculum workbooks (K–5th Grade) and a Toolkit which includes information on how to design, plan, and grow the school garden. All seven publications totaled to a whopping 854 pages of garden-related content for teachers and students.
As you can imagine, my main focus was visual consistency and my greatest challenge was managing thousands of image files, text documents, and illustrations. I worked extremely closely with the Executive Director and a freelance illustrator to develop this curriculum and I am very proud of the finished product, which can still be purchased today.
I was tasked with creating a font family for Schoolyard Roots. We had been working with a freelance illustrator for bug and veggie drawings and they would hand-label everything, scan it, and send it to me. Eventually, we ran into issues with changing names or wanting to use the illustrator’s handwriting elsewhere, so I taught myself how to use Glyphs Mini to create three typefaces. The illustrator drew all characters for me and I created vectors from scans and then used the software to produce the .otf files that are still being used today to create worksheets, t-shirts, and various other materials for the organization.
The Garden Party
For the first annual Garden Party, a farm-to-table fundraiser that started in 2013, I designed this poster. I was still a student in college and this was one of my first public-facing design projects. I continued to do graphic design work for the organization until 2017.
Miscellaneous materials
Over the course of about four years, I also designed a litany of other materials in addition to those shown above. Annual reports, program evaluation, signage, grant application presentations, annual end of year campaigns, sponsorship packets, postcards, billboards, newsletters, calendars, and soft goods are just some of the other design projects I worked on from conception to design to finished product.
