Work Samples
My work moves between design, illustration, and interactive media.
In each medium, I look for the visual language that best serves the story, idea, and audience.
Children’s Books
From story to finished book
Client: Scholastic
Role: Author, Illustrator & Cover Designer
Scope: Writing, Illustration, Cover Design, Hand-Lettering
Additional Credits: Rae Crawford (Interior/Layout Design), Patti Ann Harris (Creative Director)
As a published author and illustrator, I’ve worked with Scholastic’s design team across several children’s books, from illustrating Emma Donoghue’s The Lotterys chapter-book series (2017–2018) to creating my own picture books, Surprise! (2018) and The Ways We Say “I Love You” (2024).
Across these books, I created illustrations, designed covers, and hand-lettered titles. I love thinking about how a book works as a whole—from the rhythm of the page turns and the relationship between image and type to how the cover introduces the story to a reader.
Amplify ELA: M.C. Higgins, the Great
Capturing the spirit of a changing landscape
Client: Amplify ELA
Role: Illustrator & Visual Storyteller
Scope: Concept Development, Illustration, Supplemental Graphics
Amplify creates ELA curriculum that inspires students to read more deeply, write more vividly, and think more critically. For this unit based on Virginia Hamilton's M.C. Higgins, the Great, I developed a visual language inspired by the novel’s Appalachian setting and changing landscape.
Working from the text, I explored characters, scenes, and atmosphere through sketches before developing a painterly watercolor approach that carried across the unit.
Each sub-unit focused on a different part of the novel, requiring a new hero illustration while maintaining a cohesive visual world across the curriculum.
Amplify ELA: Summer of the Mariposas
Bringing a magical journey to life
Client: Amplify ELA
Role: Illustrator & Visual Storyteller
Scope: Concept Development, Illustration, Supplemental Graphics
For this Amplify ELA unit based on Guadalupe García McCall's magical-realist novel, Summer of the Mariposas, I created a visual world for the coming-of-age adventures of five sisters, where the ordinary and the supernatural intertwine.
I developed a layered, graphic approach inspired by contemporary folk art, Mexican folklore, and textile patterns that moves fluidly between the ordinary and the supernatural.
For each sub-unit, I reviewed the relevant chapters, proposed scenes and rough sketches, and worked with the art director and curriculum team to select and refine the final illustrations.
Amplify Desmos Math
Making math feel right for every age
Client: Amplify Desmos Math
Role: Designer & Illustrator
Scope: Visual Identity, Concept Development, Illustration, Wayfinding Design
Amplify Desmos Math is an interactive K–12 curriculum centered on math as a social, collaborative experience.
I developed a visual language within Amplify’s existing brand system for the program’s printed materials.
The goal was to bring the idea of “social math” to life through illustration, while allowing the imagery to grow in complexity across grade levels.
My role included developing the concept and illustrations for the workbook covers, as well as designing a scalable wayfinding system to help teachers and students navigate grades, editions, and volumes across the printed curriculum.
The Last Woman on Earth
A love story at the end of the world
Project: Self-initiated
Role: Author & Illustrator
Scope: Writing, Illustration, Risograph Printing & Self-Publishing
The Last Woman on Earth is a self-published graphic narrative imagining life at the end of civilization.
The story began as a response to an interview with environmental activist Joanna Macy, where she spoke about loving and caring for the Earth without making that love dependent on whether we believe it can be saved.
The project was originally written, illustrated, printed, and self-published as a risograph zine. In 2020, the complete graphic narrative was published online by Electric Literature.
“This moving graphic narrative is, ostensibly, a tale of dystopian survival. But in her rich images and simple, lyric statements, Caroline Hadilaksono creates an exquisite ode to love, the thing which truly allows us to survive and to bloom where we are planted.”
— The (Dis)content
