Woodhaven Lakes Nature Center

This project focused on creating a cohesive sign system for the entrance of the Nature Center and The Tackle Box (Bait Shop). As the designer, I approached this through multiple phases, beginning with research to ensure the primary sign featured only the local flora and fauna you could truly find in the surrounding area, making the design relevant and authentic. I then developed the custom design. The silhouette was strategically scaled to fit the roof peak. The design is supported by smaller, matching wayfinding signs ("Nature Center" and "The Tackle Box") to guide visitors and maintain a unified and aesthetic look across the front of the building.

Click here for a video providing a closer look at the design process.

This project was designed as a dynamic, self-guided activity trail focused on educating visitors about bird migration and the challenges birds face on their journeys. The core goal was to transform a standard walking path into an engaging, multi-station educational experience that encourages people to get outside and actively learn. I designed a series of signs that serve as stations along the trail, each one focusing on a different stage or obstacle in the migratory process. The signs utilize clear, concise language and bold visuals to communicate complex information quickly. By designing the content flow from sign to sign, the entire path became a sequential narrative, successfully merging outdoor exploration with a structured, informative educational experience.

The Woodhaven Lakes Nature Journal was designed as an interactive, educational tool intended for distribution to children throughout the season. The goal was to encourage outdoor exploration and learning by blending educational content with engaging activities. The cover was designed to be bright and eye catching. Inside, the journal is organized into thematic, modular sheets (like the Global Wind Day insert) that provide key scientific information while also including activity sheets (World Ocean Day) such as coloring, scavenger hunts, and simple challenges. The journal features a new page each week and follows a slightly different theme each year, such as Around the World, Rainforest, or Mammals, ensuring fresh engagement year after year. The journal is easily portable and allows kids to focus on one themed section at a time, effectively acting as an engaging, take-home curriculum that inspires them to get outside and learn.

For this exhibit on Rainforest Animals, the goal was to create a simple, engaging, and friendly display specifically for the kids' area. I designed the text panels to be entirely contained within whimsical tree leaf shapes in a bright green. This shape choice breaks away from standard rectangles and immediately aligns with the rainforest theme, creating an approachable look for children. Each panel features concise, easily digestible text describing animals and is accompanied by an image of the animal. By keeping the text brief and the shapes organic and colorful, the design facilitates simple, independent learning for children in a fun, exploratory environment.

This small piece of signage was created to promote conservation and mindfulness within the natural environment. The primary goal was to encourage visitors to respect the plants for the benefit of local wildlife. The sign is placed near plants, serving as a gentle reminder for people to leave the plants undisturbed for the pollinators. The design is intentionally clean and minimalist, using high-contrast typography to ensure the message is the sole focus.

This exhibit was designed to teach high school students and adults about the impact of multiple glaciation periods in Illinois. The project was handled in several phases, beginning with organizing the higher comprehension level content into distinct, manageable sections covering the Pre-Illinoian, Illinoian, and Wisconsinian periods, as well as the lasting local remnants. I chose a unique system of angular, modular panels that can be displayed individually, designed to visually suggest the sharp, dynamic nature of ice and glacial movement. Accompanying these content panels are supplementary maps that visually track the historical paths of the glaciers alongside what the affected areas look like now, providing clear geographic context. Across all panels, I used a high-contrast combination of flowy script titles and clear body copy to ensure complex geological data is highly readable while maintaining a visually engaging and cohesive aesthetic.

These activities truly demonstrate my work in designing various experiences that promote active learning and critical thinking within an outdoor setting. The Trivia Trail activity was created as a sequence of full set of outdoor signage specifically designed to challenge participants' knowledge using environmental questions, requiring them to read, process information, and engage in critical thinking to correctly answer. In contrast, the Animal Olympics Interactive (like the examples shown for a jump competition and 'how far can you see') was also designed with a full set of accompanying signage for the dynamic, physical challenges. This interactive uses comparative biology, allowing participants to physically measure their own abilities against those of local animals, successfully translating scientific facts into a memorable, fun, and competitive physical challenge. Both activities transform abstract learning goals into concrete, engaging experiences that require participants to move, observe, and think.

This image represents a small part of a larger exhibit dedicated to marine animals and their ocean habitats. My key design objective for this display was to visually organize complex scientific data, like the relationship between an animal and its location, into a clear, comparative format. The design directly focuses on showcasing the animal and its corresponding depth zone, using clean vertical lines and visual cues to create a sense of scale and descent. The exhibit features a visual representation of the ocean itself, clearly marking key depth levels as a reference point for the creature and the specific depth it is found at. By pairing high-quality imagery of the animal with precise data points, the exhibit successfully translates the concepts of ocean depth and pressure into understandable information which engages visitors to learn more.

I created this title graphic for a simple exhibit focused on Mice of Illinois. Recognizing that a topic like this may not immediately draw every visitor, the primary design goal was to make the title visually strong and eye-catching. The title uses playful, dynamic typography and integrates whimsical, illustrative elements to establish an approachable tone while clearly defining the regional focus. This design strategy successfully transforms the subject into a more curious and engaging topic, ensuring visitors are visually drawn in to read the exhibit.