After the pandemic disrupted how teachers and students engage with educational materials, Amplify launched a company-wide effort to translate a large portion of its curricula to online platforms. This gave the design team the opportunity to create a pilot illustration system for the Word Works program.
The new illustration style needed to have a unique voice, be age-appropriate for audiences between the ages of 5 and 8, and, most importantly, be a scalable system that would facilitate the task of creating high volumes of illustrations for a wide variety of topics.
Back to basics with geometric forms
Along with the illustration team, we created a source bank of simple geometric shapes that serve as the foundation for the spot illustrations. The goal was that, by combining these pieces, any designer or illustrator could depict a range of topics—simple to complex—while maintaining visual consistency throughout.
Facial Expressions
While WordWorks facial expressions are often theatrical to better engage our target audience, we also included more subtle emotions (e.g., listening, thinking, or feeling bad about something) to add nuance and depth.
Color
By expanding Amplify's legacy color usage, we created a comprehensive color palette that brings the illustrations to life, giving them a joyful, engaging, and vibrant quality that resonates with young audiences, and enhances the learning materials.
Researched Driven Color Palette:
When there isn’t an existing color in the WW Color Palette to accurately represent a person or object, we decided to adapt the palette by selecting colors based on research of Amplify's own materials. To avoid monolithic representation, we incorporated specific, research-based details into character designs. Whenever possible, we provided a variety of character designs when depicting a single culture, ensuring no one figure stands in for an entire group.
When representing cultures outside of our own, it was crucial to include modern elements to prevent the culture from being stereotyped as 'stuck in time.' Additionally, we enhanced the storytelling by adding meaningful details in the background.
