FOUNDING ART DIRECTOR · QUILL & QUEST
Designing a city kids could play.
Quill & Quest needed to feel like more than a travel guide. It had to be a secret file, a family game, a field journal, and an invitation to explore—all at once. Hadia Akbar helped build the visual system that made that possible.
“The goal was never just to show children a city. It was to make the city feel like an adventure waiting for them.”
From an idea to a repeatable system
Working in editable Canva documents, Hadia helped turn an experimental family project into a design language that could travel from one city to the next. Her founding art direction established how stories, puzzles, maps, evidence, activities, and moments of discovery could live together on the page.
A cover world that promises a quest.
City landmarks, parchment, quill imagery, and evidence-board energy establish the genre at a glance.
What the founding system defined
- A field-journal structure that invites children to write, draw, and solve.
- A balance of narrative, factual discovery, puzzles, maps, and family activities.
- Page rhythm that alternates dense investigation with visual breathing room.
- Typography, color, framing, and recurring devices that make each book recognizably Quill & Quest.
- Editable Canva foundations that allowed the family and publisher to test and extend the series.
A system built to travel
A strong series identity has to welcome a completely new city without losing its voice. The visual grammar Hadia helped establish gives every edition room for local landmarks, stories, puzzles, and discoveries while keeping the invitation familiar: open the file, pick up the quill, and begin investigating.
The field journal opens
FROM THE ORIGINAL EDITABLE FILE
The design system takes shape
Selected working spreads from the original 48-page Washington, DC Canva file show how Hadia turned a real city into a game board: a map and quest log, recurring Seeker tools, and landmark pages built from evidence, prompts, points, and room for a child’s own discoveries.
The Map of Marvels and questing logbook make exploration playable.
Quill, Seeker’s Eye, badges, and story spells create a repeatable vocabulary.
Photography, framed evidence, points, prompts, and checkboxes share one page.
Development-file note: These are selected working spreads from an early editable Canva file. They document Hadia Akbar’s founding art direction and the evolution of the series; they are not presented as corrected final-edition pages.
How the system grew
Guildlight Press has continued to expand and productionize the foundation Hadia helped establish. New formats and later editions may add new illustration, editorial, or production techniques, but the originating design idea remains visible: children do not merely read about a place—they investigate it.
Creative credit: Founding art direction and original Quill & Quest series design by Hadia Akbar (@talhacanva).