Literacy Treasure Map
Visualizing Curriculum Hierarchy as an Illustrated Treasure Map
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Amplify's ELA program had a rich, pedagogically-structured literacy journey — different types of books, varying levels of difficulty, and a deliberate progression built on how students develop as readers. The challenge was making that curriculum hierarchy visible and engaging, both for teachers navigating the program and for the broader goal of helping students understand where they were in their reading journey.
A standard chart or table would have communicated the structure, but not the sense of adventure and progress that makes a literacy curriculum feel exciting to a student. The map needed to be both pedagogically accurate and genuinely fun.
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I was the visual designer on this project, and I developed the core concept — how to translate the curriculum's content hierarchy, book types, and difficulty progression into the language of a treasure map. I then designed the map itself, for both digital and print use.
Mapped the ELA curriculum structure to understand the full literacy journey — content types, book categories, pedagogical progression, and difficulty levels
Developed the concept of a treasure map as the visual metaphor, identifying how curriculum hierarchy could translate into map geography, landmarks, and paths
Designed the illustrated map, encoding real curriculum structure into the visual — difficulty, content type, and reading progression all represented spatially
Adapted the design for both digital use within the product and print as a physical classroom material
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The Literacy Treasure Map turned a complex curriculum hierarchy into something immediately readable and engaging — a piece that worked as a functional navigation tool for teachers and a motivating visual for students. It also established a creative template for thinking about how curriculum structure could be communicated through illustration and spatial design rather than tables and lists.
Design Direction
