Cabrillo National Monument.
I designed print-based learning experiences for visitors at Cabrillo National Monument. The work included activity booklets, self-guided exploration tools, event materials, and promotional print pieces that helped people engage with the park’s natural, cultural, and historical stories.
Rather than designing for a screen, I designed for real-world moments: a family at a whale overlook, a child exploring a trail, or a visitor stopping at an event table. Each piece needed to be clear, approachable, print-ready, and usable with little to no instruction.
These projects are featured in depth because they show how I designed educational experiences for real park visitors.
Gray Whale Watching Activity Book
I designed this activity booklet for Cabrillo’s guided whale-watching program. It gave visitors a structure for looking, noticing, and learning while they used binoculars at the park overlook.
The booklet moves through the experience from orientation to observation: a migration map, an anatomy activity, prompts for identifying whale behavior, and a final reflection page.
Help visitors observe gray-whale migration with more curiosity and confidence.
- Families and visitors with varied prior knowledge
- A brief, outdoor visitor experience
- Guided use with a ranger or independent exploration
- A reusable seasonal program
Junior Botanist: Spring Flower Hunt
The Junior Botanist booklet invited visitors to find native plants along Cabrillo’s trails, observe their surroundings, and return to the visitor center to share what they found.
I designed the activity to be easy to begin: visitors could pick it up, understand the task quickly, and use it as a guide while moving through the park. It worked alongside a staffed information table, but it also supported independent exploration.
Turn a park walk into a self-guided native-plant discovery activity.
- Families and self-guided visitors
- Short, low-pressure learning moments
- Movement through a real physical environment
- Discovery through observation rather than lecture
Outcome: The promoted second run reached roughly 10× the participants of the initial test run, reinforcing that a strong activity also needs clear visibility and promotion.
Open Tower Day Activity Book
I designed this folded eight-panel booklet for Open Tower Day. It included a word hunt, drawing prompt, Bingo-style scavenger hunt, ranger question, stamps, and an event checklist.
The format was designed to be easy to distribute and carry while visitors moved through the lighthouse area. Each activity pointed visitors back to the site itself, making the booklet part of the event experience rather than a passive handout.
Give families an active way to explore the Old Point Loma Lighthouse during a special event.
- Families participating in a busy event
- Multiple ages and levels of confidence
- Independent exploration with optional ranger interaction
- A compact, print-friendly format
Eco-Web Card Game
I designed an interactive card game that translated ecological relationships into a facilitated learning activity. Visitors could connect species, explore dependencies, and discuss how changes to one part of the ecosystem affect others.
Help visitors understand coastal food-web relationships through hands-on play.
- Hands-on, social learning
- Facilitated conversations with park staff
- Turning complex ecology into understandable relationships
- A reusable card system that future staff could extend
15 species across two decks, coastal scrub and intertidal/marine, plus 11 event cards and 3 resource cards. Click a card to flip it, drag to rotate it, and pick any card in the grid to view it up top.
Nature Journal
I designed a reusable nature-journal worksheet with prompts for date, weather, location, noticing, wondering, feeling, and sketching. It supported multiple programs and encouraged visitors to create their own record of the park.
Give visitors a simple structure for slowing down, observing, and reflecting outdoors.
- Self-guided observation
- Open-ended reflection across ages
- Flexible reuse across different programs and seasons
- A low-pressure entry point into nature interpretation
Flyers, posters and event handouts
Alongside the featured pieces, I created smaller printed pieces for park programs, visitor engagement, and promotion.
Designed for the Field
These pieces were designed for use in the park, not just for display.
Visitors might be standing outdoors, traveling with children, short on time, or encountering the topic for the first time. That shaped my decisions around format, hierarchy, and interaction. I used different print formats for different moments:
Across the work, I focused on making the first step clear: what to do, where to look, and how to begin.
In Use and Built to Last
The goal was not simply to make attractive printed pieces. The work needed to support visitor engagement and remain useful after my term ended.
The materials helped visitors participate in programs through observation, movement, prompts, and hands-on activities. They also helped staff run programs with clearer structure and reusable resources.
For the Junior Botanist program, the more fully promoted second run drew roughly 10× more participants than the initial test. That experience reinforced the connection between designing a strong activity and making sure visitors know it exists.
I also created editable files, templates, and program documentation so future associates could reuse and adapt the work rather than start from scratch.
Collaboration and Handoff
I worked with park rangers, subject-matter experts, visitor-center staff, volunteers, and social-media partners to make these experiences possible.
Rangers and specialists helped ensure that the content was accurate and meaningful. I translated that expertise into approachable public-facing activities, while coordinating materials, event needs, promotion, and delivery.
To support future staff, I left behind editable design files, activity templates, promotional assets, and documentation for recurring programs.
The result was a collection of print-based educational experiences designed to work in the moment—and to keep working after I moved on.