Oxford Study Buddy is an award-winning study series for Australian high school students preparing for their end-of-year exams. It fuses comics, video-games and educational content into one. In addition to illustrating the comic-pages and characters, I created the series text design and played an integral role in the products concept and branding. 

Excitingly, Oxford Study Buddy won first-place at the Educational Publishing Awards Australia (2022) as a Secondary Reference Resource for its unique approach to educational engagement. 

The project called for illustrated characters to appear within the margin-notes to give students tips and tricks. It also asked for characters to have back stories and give readers a call-to-action. We decided to tell each back-story in comic-form, book-ending each volume. 
I pitched Oxford's publishing team a concept which gamified the experience. 
The concept involved each of the study buddies to undergo an accidental transformation; one professor turns into a flower, another a strawberry. As the reader completes chapters, they're awarded a Knowledge Crystal and with enough Knowledge Crystals, our heroes are transformed back.
This is the back-story of Professor Pam Nesia (our Psychology Professor). Pam's fatal flaw is hubris; the type of hubris that comes from playing God. 
This is P.L.A.N.C.K. 3.0, the world's first Physics AI professor, that is until a wacky mishap gets in the way. P.L.A.N.C.K. is about to learn that being human isn't as easy as it seems. 
There's only one way for readers to find out what happens to the Oxford study buddies. That's right, by levelling up their knowledge. Go on. Collect the crystals and help a guy like Ray Diaz out. It's embarrassing being a strawberry.
The Oxford Study Buddy universe is an interesting place. The splash page at the end of each book shows all the characters celebrating their students success. 
Here's a look at our heroes with their varied expressions. These illustrations are integrated into the content to tell jokes and pass on their wisdom. 
When it came to the branding, it was agreed that Oxford Study Buddy needed to be quirky and unique. We sifted through typography specialists worldwide, until finding TUUMIK, an Estonian agency. I worked with TUUMIK to create Oxford Study Buddy's unique brandmark. 
In addition to the illustrations, I also created the series text design. The text design is a 100+ page document used to inform Oxford's typesetters on the guidelines for typesetting all nine books. 
This was a huge team effort, with many talented people at Oxford working tirelessly on it. Above everything else, we wanted Oxford Study Buddy to be educational but fun. I can't wait to see where the series grows over the years to come.