Have you ever had a design idea that sounded great in your head, but the moment you actually started creating it, you realized there was a lot more to figure out? That pretty much sums up my third week of product development.
it was finally time to start building Classroom & Beyond my visual communication toolkit for educators. I was excited to move into Canva and start designing, but I realized that creating an entire toolkit was different from designing a few individual templates.
I started by establishing the overall visual identity. Since my target audience includes high school teachers and school staff, I wanted something clean, modern, and professional rather than the typical colorful classroom aesthetic. I chose a neutral color palette with muted sage and blue accents, bold typography, and simple layouts that could work across different types of materials.
My first focus was the daily classroom slides collection. I began developing layouts for agendas, Do Nows, learning targets, guiding questions, activity directions, and exit tickets. These are materials teachers use regularly, so starting here made sense. One of my biggest challenges was figuring out how to organize everything. Initially, I treated each slide type as its own product, which made the project feel much larger than it needed to be.
I also had to rethink my original design. Some of my early ideas looked too similar to generic templates already available online. I wanted Classroom & Beyond to have its own identity while still being practical for educators. Once I established consistent typography, spacing, colors, and visual hierarchy, creating additional layouts became much easier.
By the end of Week 3, I estimated that I was about 20% finished. While there was still a ton of work ahead, I was proud that the project finally felt like a cohesive product instead of a collection of random designs.
This week reminded me that product development isn’t always about creating more. Sometimes it’s about reorganizing, simplifying, and making intentional design decisions.
Leave a Reply