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Quirky Kid’s Basecamp® won Best Designed Educational Primary/Secondary Book at the 2018 Australian Book Design Awards, recognising the program’s distinctive approach to making anxiety education engaging and accessible for children.
The award was presented in Melbourne on 25 May 2018 at the 66th Australian Book Design Awards. The Australian Book Designers Association records Basecamp® as the 2018 winner in the educational primary/secondary category.
Basecamp® was designed by Lisa Diebold and Leonardo Rocker, published by Quirky Kid and written by Dr Kathryn Berry. The project brought together psychology, illustration, publishing and interactive learning design to create a resource that children could actively explore rather than simply read.
Designing psychology for children
Basecamp® uses a fictional Australian national park as the setting for learning about anxiety. Children move through themed environments, activities and practical exercises that introduce concepts such as anxious thinking, avoidance and coping strategies.
The visual design was developed to make a complex mental health topic feel approachable. The Australian Book Designers Association highlighted the use of bright colours, textured vector illustrations, interactive elements and an adventure format built around an Australian landscape.
The design process was collaborative and iterative, with the team testing and refining activities and visual concepts as the program developed.
Recognition from Australia’s design community
The Australian Book Design Awards celebrate excellence in the design of books published in Australia. In 2018, Basecamp® was shortlisted alongside educational titles from Cengage and the ARC Centre of Excellence for All-Sky Astrophysics before being named the category winner.
The award recognised more than appearance alone. For Quirky Kid, the design challenge was to translate psychological concepts into a resource that children would want to engage with repeatedly, while still giving parents, teachers and professionals a structured way to support learning.
The Australian Book Designers Association later profiled the making of Basecamp®, describing it as a three-year collaborative project involving design, psychology, writing and extensive development.
A year of major recognition for Basecamp®
The Australian Book Design Award followed another significant international achievement for Basecamp®. Earlier in 2018, the program won the Educational Initiatives Award at the London Book Fair International Excellence Awards.
Together, the two awards recognised different strengths of the same project: its educational purpose and its design execution.
Basecamp® remains part of Quirky Kid’s suite of psychologist-developed programs and can be delivered through Quirky Kid or licensed by schools and psychology clinics with facilitator training and implementation support.
