DETROIT PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Bringing clarity and creativity to the way schools connect with their communities.
Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) is Michigan’s largest public school system, focused on helping families navigate school choices, empowering student leadership, and amplifying community voice. As part of their annual resource rollout, I worked with the agency leading their marketing to design Back to School materials that were both informative and creatively engaging. The challenge was to turn three key resources—a School Guide, Leadership Course Catalog, and Advisory Toolkit—into vibrant, student-first tools with clarity and impact.
Context & challenge
PROJECT SCOPE
Print Collateral designs
INDUSTRY
Public Education & Youth Engagement
Developed as part of my role as a freelancer with Robert Half. Led concept, art direction and design as part of Ad Water media's team.
Context & Challenge
Detroit Public Schools Community District ( DPSCD) is Michigan’s largest public school system, focused on helping families navigate school choices, empowering student leadership, and amplifying community voice.
As part of their annual resource rollout, I worked with the agency leading their marketing to design Back to School materials that were both informative and creatively engaging. The challenge was to turn three key resources—a School Guide, Leadership Course Catalog, and Advisory Toolkit—into vibrant, student-first tools with clarity and impact.
The creative goal: design print materials that informed, inspired, and elevated how the schools showed up in the hands of its community.
PROJECT SCOPE
Print Collateral Design
INDUSTRY
Public Education & Youth Engagement
Developed as part of my role as a freelancer with Robert Half.
Led concept, art direction and design as part of Ad Water media's team.
DETROIT PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Bringing clarity and creativity to the way schools connect with their communities.
Simplifying School Choice
Picking the Perfect School guide was designed to feel both informative and full of personality.
I brought in playful layout variations, colorful accents, and thoughtful image placement to keep each page visually engaging—without overwhelming the content. The result is a guide that’s clear, inviting, and genuinely helpful for parents navigating school choices, while also engaging enough to spark student interest and encourage them to explore what the schools have to offer.
Simplifying school choices
I brought in playful layout variations, colorful accents, and thoughtful image placement to keep each page visually engaging—without overwhelming the content. The result is a guide that’s clear, inviting, and genuinely helpful for parents navigating school choices, while also engaging enough to spark student interest and encourage them to explore what the schools have to offer.
STUDENT LEADERSHIP COURSE CATALOG
While the SLDP catalog needed consistency to guide students through multiple sessions,
I focused on subtle design details, like how illustrations interact with photos or introducing motivational quotes to inject personality into the page and make each page more engaging.
The goal was to make each spread feel intentional, not just templated.
STUDENT LEADERSHIP CATALOG
While the SLDP catalog needed consistency to guide students through multiple sessions, I focused on subtle design details, like how illustrations interact with photos or introducing motivational quotes to inject personality into the page and make each page more engaging. The goal was to make each spread feel intentional, not just templated.
The School Advisory Toolkit was designed for clarity—simple, structured, and easy to navigate. While keeping the focus on information, I brought in subtle elements from the larger Back to School campaign to create cohesion. Clean layouts and bold headers ensured the toolkit felt functional yet still visually aligned with the overall brand.
THE IMPACT
By pairing strong visual organization with an inviting tone, the materials became more than just informative, they felt like tools built with families in mind. The refreshed designs helped strengthen communication across stakeholders and positioned the district as a more accessible, student-first institution.
