The "Spark Your Design Creativity" activity book by Atlanta design nonprofit Spark Corps. The book is a tool that introduces kids to design thinking while helping them to build fundamental social skills. This is done by walking kids through 16 engaging activities. The book covers lessons and activities in sketching, color theory, perspective, shading, patterns, typefaces, curiosity, empathy, user needs, brainstorming, resourcefulness, testing, storytelling, pixels, innovation, and logo ideation.

The goal of the book it to use design as platform to teach both design thinking as well as vital 21st century learning skills like critical thinking, team work and empathy. As designers, we use many of these skills each and every day. Through design education, we believe that by sharing this profession with young learners we can help build the next generation of leaders.

Our team started working on the book in 2014. Since then, it our designers have used the book through multiple design iterations and user testing sessions with schools, museums, parents and kids.
To refine the content, activities were tested with children at The Kindezi School Old Fourth Ward in Atlanta, Museum of Design Atlanta, and Georgia Institute of Technology School of Industrial Design. These interactions allowed us to introduce kids to design thinking and prototype different activities aimed at assessing interest and engagement.

After finishing up the final design iteration in the summer of 2016, Spark Corps launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the book's first run of 500 copies. We successfully raised over $7,000 to print, sell and promote the book.

Since then, our organization has seen an overwhelmingly positive response from children, parents and retailers. The book is now for sale in Barnes and Noble Buckhead, Binder's Art, Museum of Design Atlanta, and Tree House Kid and Craft (Athens and Decatur) as well as on Amazon, Etsy, and Spark Corps' website.

Building on the success of Spark Your Design Creativity, we are also actively building out our design education product line via the development of a card game called Createovate. Createovate is a fast paced game of crazy designing where players draw, write, pitch, and sketch silly solutions to problems. What would you ask an octopus riding the train? What product would you make for a ninja in the kitchen? Kids get the opportunity to answer these questions for themselves and judge which answers win!

To date, our book is in 6 different countries and has been sold in both local and nationally known retailers. We are thrilled with the success to date and are excited to grow our work. Spark Corps plans to continue building out their design education product suite to help kids learn the importance of design and build their 21st century learning skills. We believe in the power of design to foster creativity and 21st century thinking, and we want to share this passion with the world.

The "Spark Your Design Creativity" activity book by Atlanta design nonprofit Spark Corps. The book is a tool that introduces kids to design thinking while helping them to build fundamental social skills. This is done by walking kids through 16 engaging activities. The book covers lessons and activities in sketching, color theory, perspective, shading, patterns, typefaces, curiosity, empathy, user needs, brainstorming, resourcefulness, testing, storytelling, pixels, innovation, and logo ideation.

The goal of the book it to use design as platform to teach both design thinking as well as vital 21st century learning skills. These include things like critical thinking, team work, empathy, leadership, and other key social skills necessary to working with others. As designers, we use many of these skills each and every day as part of our profession. Through design education, we believe that by sharing this profession with young learners, we can help build the next generation of leaders.

Our team started working on the book in 2014. Spark Corps' partner Orange Sparkle Ball (OSB) held and in-house design camp with the goal of introducing children to the importance of design thinking. During this camp, OSB designers created a small design education book guided children through the fundamentals and principles of design such as color theory, patterns and user need that enabled the children to practice their new design skills through engaging activities.

The book was a hit and we actively worked to explore how we could build on its success. Over the course of the next 3 years, the book's content has been developed, modified and reworked by both Spark Corps.

In 2015, apprentices Grace Cha and Allie Miller refined the content and its language considering factors like reading level, usability and material comprehension. This included user testing with organizations like Museum of Design Atlanta, Georgia Tech School of Industrial Design and The Kindezi Old Fourth Ward.

In the summer of 2106, our design Apprentices, Ashley Toucton and Emily Moore took on the task of refining the formatting and visual design to make it appealing and easy for children to understand.
In order to raise funds for printing, Ashley and Emily then led a successful Kickstarter campaign. Our team entered into the Kickstarter having never done one. In the end, this novenas may have been to our advantage.

We poured our hearts and souls into the product and the video thinking that would be enough. We contacted design universities, elementary schools, and homeschool groups, called on all our teams' personal contacts, reached out to blogs and newspapers, Posted QR code fliers in coffee shops, schools, and libraries, and exhausted all social media outlets daily including messaging anyone and everyone we thought would be interested.

We made it to our goal in the last few hours the Kickstarter was live - we were so excited and a little relieved! We raised $7,866, which allowed us to print 500 books, send all our rewards out, and donate 15 copies to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta!

Since self-publishing, our first step was to put it up for sale online on Amazon, Etsy, and our website, then at craft and maker fairs in Atlanta, and finally, we worked on getting it in brick and mortar stores. Currently, the books are for sale at Museum of Design Atlanta, Barnes and Noble Buckhead, Tree house Kid and Craft Athens and Decatur, and Binders at Ponce City Market as well as on Amazon, Etsy, and Spark Corps' website.

Moving forward, we're planning on getting the book into more stores and beginning the development of secondary design education product line. Createovate is a fast paced game of crazy designing where players draw, write, pitch, and sketch silly solutions to problems. What would you ask an octopus riding the train? What product would you make for a ninja in the kitchen? Kids get the opportunity to answer these questions for themselves and judge which answers win!

To date, our book is in 6 different countries and has been sold in both local and nationally known retailers. We are thrilled with the success to date and are excited to grow our work. Spark Corps plans to continue building out their design education product suite to help kids learn the importance of design and build their 21st century learning skills. We believe in the power of design to foster creativity and 21st century thinking, and we want to share this passion with the world.