American Montessori Society

The American Montessori Society is a New York City-based, member-supported nonprofit organization which promotes the use of the Montessori teaching approach—a type of educational method that involves children's natural interests and activities rather than formal teaching methods—in private and public schools (Wikipedia).

I collaborated with AMS on three projects to date, they are: Annual Report Design, Event Merchandise Design, and Flyers Redesign (Simplified Chinese).

Project 1: Annual Report Design

I designed AMS’s 73-page Annual Survey Report of 2023/24.

Data Visualization

The report was full of various formats of data visualization, so it's important to establish a cohesive design system to be applied throughout different charts, tables, and graphs—all while maintaining the original brand voice.

For an easier customization process and factual representation of the data, I asked AMS to share with me their original survey counts and numbers. Using these data, I custom-made over 40 infographics in Google Sheets.

To color all the infographics, I picked 4 of AMS’s brand colors and built a designated palette on a gradienting saturation and value to make it easier on the eyes. Lastly, I made sure these colors were color-blind-safe and contrast-proof.

1 – 50 students_N = 45, 51 – 100 students_N = 46, 101 – 150 students N = 47, 151 – 200 students N = 36, 201 – 250 students N = 12…

One of the bar graph infographics

Workflow Optimization

My go-to tool for designing documents, reports, and books is Adobe Indesign. But this time, I chose to work in Figma for two reasons: First, AMS only planned to distribute this report digitally. Second, I found the workflow between Figma and Google Sheets(both web-based) was slightly smoother than Indesign and Google Sheets after testing.

To manage a consistent design treatment to all the tables in this report, I used components and auto-layouts in Figma to streamline my process.

Before vs. After

(drag the middle bar)

Use the arrows to flip through the entire report (this feature works best on desktop)

Project 2: Event Merchandise Design

For The Montessori Event this year, which took place in Orlando from March 7-10, 2024, I designed the booklets and button pins for AMS. This letter-size booklet was composed of 8 pages of “Offerings and Events”, informing event-goers of AMS’s latest updates. The button pins offer 4 design combinations and 12 different phrases, such as “for compassion”, “for empowerment”, and “for inclusion”.

Check out #TheMontessoriEvent on LinkedIn!

Project 3: Flyers Redesigned in Simplified Chinese

I redesigned and helped translate some of AMS’s program flyers into Chinese versions. Since I’m bilingual and know how to design with Chinese characters, I took over the original design files and inputted Chinese characters over the English texts. The key was to choose a suitable Chinese font that was highly legible and matched the original aesthetics, to make sure the hierarchy was the same (what to bold, font sizes), and to double-check for the smooth and accurate readability for the native audience.