Top 4 Moments of 2024

As we close out 2024 and look forward to the new year, all of us at FableVision want to take a moment to reflect on and celebrate the remarkable year we’ve had. We’re extremely proud of the achievements, milestones, and fun times spent with friends and partners. Before we celebrate all the possibilities that come in the new year, here’s our top moments from 2024!

---

A Very Shiny Year

FableVision’s Gary Goldberger and Liz Newbury of the Wilson Center accepting the award for The Plastic Pipeline at G4C!

2024 was extra sparkly as SEVEN of our collaborations garnered awards. From groundbreaking educational platforms to innovative sustainability projects, our work is recognized for it’s creativity, impact, and social good. Here are just some highlights

• Anthem Awards Silver in Education, Art & Culture - Education or Literacy Platform Product, Innovation, or Service for Nunaka: My Village (Chugachmiut) 

• Anthem Awards Bronze in Responsible Technology - Education or Literacy Platform Product, Innovation, or Service for Give As We Grow (GivingTuesday and Phillips Foundation)

• Anthem Awards Bronze in Responsible Technology - Film, Video, Television or Show for Heroes of Zero (Power of Zero)

• International Serious Play Award, Gold for GASHA GO! World (Georgia Public Broadcasting and GaDOE)

• GEE! Award Winner (Informal Learning): GASHA GO! World (Georgia Public Broadcasting and GaDOE)

• Stevie Awards, Bronze, K-12: MathBee (Stride/K12)

• G4C Awards, Best in Environmental Impact Winner for The Plastic Pipeline (The Wilson Center)

---

Red Carpet Rolled Out

We hosted a few star-studded studio events in 2024! 

Creative Juices

In July, we kicked off the summer fun with our annual Creative Juices art show open house at the studio! The event featured original works of art created by staff and studio friends, a live band, and lots of laughs. 

Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Reception

This past fall the NCSS Conference was just down the street from us, what better opportunity to host a FableVision Studios reception?! We had lots of new faces in the studio and some old friends too. 

TLC Studios Opening

The Reynolds Center for Teaching, Learning, and Creativity recently debuted their latest offering: their brand new brick-and-mortar location, TLC Studios & Media Lab: Innovation & Creativity Center. To kick off its grand opening, partners, educators, and friends were invited to explore the space for themselves! 

---

In Good Company

We have the best clients in the world. Our partners work with us to find creative solutions for complex challenges. Here are just a few of our big collaborations from the year.

Our collaboration with IGDILab on a new PreK storybook assessment brought us to the Gates Foundation! The platform captures key developmental domains in ways that prioritize equitable outcomes and moves away from harmful historical assessment traditions.

Nickelodeon and audiyo-yo’s launch of the Dora’s Aventuras podcast features rockin’ music, sound-based minigames, and exciting stories that inspire and entertain. Every day is an Aventura when you’re with Dora!

The Heroes of Zero continues to garner much-deserved recognition in various award competitions this year. The animated series, created with the Power of Zero, teaches 5-8-year-olds the skills needed for an increasingly online world. 

Stride/K12’s Learning Hub holds two collaborations with FableVision. The ELA Village world acts as a virtual lobby to their existing minigames and MathBee gameplay engages learners to solidify their math skills.

The National Gallery of Art’s Paint ‘n’ Play interactive, developed by FableVision, invites visitors to learn about the art around them by digitally creating their own.

---

smart Cookies

Who us? You betcha! Our team traveled near and far to share our knowledge, best practices, and stories from behind the production curtain.

FableVision’s Anne Richards, Sarah Ditkoff, Kellian Adams Pletcher, and Steph Hoechst representing the studio on this year’s conference circuit!

---

And looking ahead to 2025…

We’re hitting the road in the new year! We’ll be sharing insights, meeting new people, and growing our community. We can’t wait for what comes next! 

We’re headed to FETC this January! Check out Sarah Ditkoff, VP of Strategic Partnership’s panel, “How To Integrate Game-Based Learning into Curriculum Design.” She’ll be joined by Stride, Inc’s Chief Learning Officer Niyoka Mccoy, and i2e Edu’s Senior Manager of Customer Engagement Nathan Wells. 

• President Gary Goldberger, VP of Development Rachel Reade Marcus, VP of moonladder Tone Thyne, and VP of audiyo-yo Anne Richards will be attending the Kidscreen Summit in February!

• FableVisionaries are setting off to Austin for SXSW EDU in March.

• Director of G.L.A.M. Innovation Kellian Adams Pletcher’s forthcoming book on building games in museums, published by Rowan and Littlefield, is set to release in 2025! Pulling from Kellian's work with museums and interactive exhibit production, the book provides a guideline for creating digital, analog, or digital/physical games tailored to museum settings. If you just can’t wait, check out Kellian’s article in the fall 2024 publication of AAM: A Museum Community Starts with Friends: Building Open-Source Prototypes for Audience Engagement with Project AMI.

---

Let's Rewind: FableVision's Top Moments of 2022

Another year, another reflection! As we eagerly await the clock striking 12 and greeting 2023 with open minds and hearts, we want to review 2022’s highlights that were made possible by our incredible and dedicated staff, partners, and friends. 

---

New Year, New Logo

To celebrate our 25th anniversary, FableVision unveiled its new, dynamic logo. Our fresh look pays tribute to the whimsy of our original logo, designed by FableVision founder and New York Times bestselling author/illustrator Peter H. Reynolds, with a contemporary and playful personality. 

Since one image couldn’t encompass all of FableVision, our spiral O is interchangeable with icon doodles including chicks, planets, aliens, and more. 

---

Did You Hear About Our New Audio Division, audiyo-yo? 

With a desire to keep growing, FableVision launched audiyo-yo, our new podcast division dedicated to creating entertaining, engaging, and educational audio content for children and families. 

“Even though audio is a classic form of storytelling going all the way back to radio plays, there’s so much exciting new work happening in this space right now,” said audiyo-yo VP Anne Richards. “There’s a lot of room for innovation and emerging voices to make an impact.”

audiyo-yo celebrated the launch of its first two projects – first, the interactive, voice-activated Pinna Original Yes No Audio Escape series, where listeners co-create the story by answering “yes” or “no” to questions; second, Pinna Original Roasting Vegetables, a short-form audio series full of silly vegetable puns, original beets, and nutritious, delicious characters.

---

Exciting Industry Recognition

We are honored to work with amazing partners to represent unique and educational projects. Check out the recognition we’ve received and how we reached a broader audience.

Reception on our roofdeck the night before MuseumExpo

• To help spread the word about audiyo-yo, Kidscreen featured articles about our audio division, how audiyo-yo tackles the future of kids’ podcasts, and audiyo-yo’s podcasts to keep on your radar. 

• Children can now listen to the Pinna Original Yes No Audio Escape series on Pinna’s app and to the Pinna Original podcast Roasting Vegetables in Pinna’s Surprise Box. Kidscreen also took a deeper look into the development of the interactive escape series in its online and print magazine.

NoiseFilter’s Doc Griggs stopped by to record in our studio

• Tone Thyne, FableVision’s VP of Creative, served as showrunner for Spin Master’s Sago Mini Friends, a new animated series for preschoolers on Apple TV+ based on the characters from the Sago Mini Friends app. In the adorable nod to gratitude, four friends play, explore, imagine, and celebrate daily in their joyful town of Sagoville.

• Guru Studio partnered with award-winning TIME Studios to develop FableVision’s new animated series Scoops, created by Tone Thyne. The lighthearted comedy tackles neighborhood news stories featured on best friends Ellerby and Olsen’s home-grown news show.

• FOX8 in New Orleans ran stories about two NoiseFilter animations – clinical trials with Irma Thomas and pediatric vaccines – while interviewing Doc Griggs.

• Animal Antics, created with Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Civics! An American Musical, created in partnership with Maryland Public Television, Maryland Humanities, and Tufts’ Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), were included in the 2022 American Library Association’s Notable Children’s Digital Media list.

Meeting with Georgia Public Broadcasting about GASHA GO!

• Echo Explorers, a born-accessible Cyberchase game created with The WNET Group, THIRTEEN, and Bridge Multimedia, was nominated for Kidscreen 2022 Best Learning App — Branded award in the Kids Digital category.

• Peter H. Reynolds’ book Be You!, published by Scholastic, reached the Top 10 List for The New York Times Children’s Best Sellers — Picture Books.

---

Thought Leadership

Sharing our experience and insights while meeting experts in the field helps us strengthen our services and grow our community. Here’s where we presented this year.

Kellian (as Ms. Drizzle) at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute

• Sarah Ditkoff, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, presented Civics! An American Musical at the Middle States Council for Social Studies (MSCSS) Annual Conference, the National Council for History Education (NCHE) Conference, and the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS).

Paul and Peter H. Reynolds at FlipFest

• Director of G.L.A.M (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) Innovation Kellian Adams Pletcher took center stage at MuseumNext’s Museums, Games, & Play Summit to discuss how to learn from past failures in game production and what makes games succeed or fail. She also spoke about trends for museums and play for the Children’s Museum Research Center, China, created and implemented a team-building game at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and taught introduction to game design at Emerson College. 

• Ideas Last, a podcast hosted by Danielle Gillespie, featured FableVision President and Co-Founder Gary Goldberger to discuss the launch of FableVision, how to approach learning in a new way, and his advice for entrepreneurs. 

Peter Stidwill at YOU Belong in STEM

• Peter H. Reynolds and FableVision CEO Paul Reynolds presented about International Dot Day at Flip’s FlipFest at ISTELive22, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Boch Center’s Wang Theatre.

• Anne Richards spoke at the 2022 Games for Change Festival on how podcasts can meet the needs of children, parents, and educators, both now and in the future.

• At the Connected Learning Summit (CLS), Sarah Ditkoff and Gary Goldberger discussed the power of partnerships between academia, for-profits, and nonprofits.

• Executive Producer Peter Stidwill presented on supporting STEM education through small business innovation research at the YOU Belong in STEM National Coordinating Conference hosted by the U.S. Department of Education.

---

To Wrap It Up…

It’s not all serious work for us. As we settled into our new space on the bustling and historic Newbury Street, we hosted a reception the night before the American Alliance of Museums Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo and a game design discussion with leaders from IDEO and Innova in Peru. Our staff and friends participated in our ninth annual Extra Life to raise funds for the Boston Children’s Hospital. 

Thank you to our wonderful partners and staff – old and new – who help us create incredible projects. Whether you’re stopping by for a meeting, recording in our sound booth, or attending an event, we hope to see you at our studio soon. We can’t wait to see what we accomplish in 2023!

A Backstage Tour of Our Rebrand

Kirra’s yellow chick that changed it all.

Everything changed with the chicken. It was the fall of 2021 and designer Jamie Griffin had just delivered her latest batch of possible new FableVision logo options. A Slack message popped up from FableVision President and Co-Founder Gary Goldberger —“Oh my god, did you see the chicken?” Just another morning at FableVision.

In January, we revealed FableVision’s 25th anniversary makeover by showing off our new logo. Today, we’ll take you behind the scenes of FableVision’s new look and share how a young artist named Kirra became the breakthrough surprise of our rebrand story. 

---

When Peter. H Reynolds, Paul Reynolds, Gary Goldberger, and John Lechner founded FableVision in 1996, Peter designed the studio’s original logo. We’ve always had a soft spot for nostalgia, so he went for a “retro” or “diner-esque” vibe that featured his signature handwriting. The orange and yellow bursts came from the design software’s “star shape” tool and brought some energy and movement to the logo.

Our original logo, designed by Founder Peter H. Reynolds.

We love Peter’s original logo—it served us well for 25 years! As FableVision grew, evolved, and expanded its projects, we decided to honor our anniversary with a fresh look. We invited graphic designer Jamie Griffin, a friend of the studio, to help us explore a new look, while remaining true to who we are. 

“I generally approach branding projects by first gaining an understanding of what the client is all about,” says Jamie. “If the project is a brand redesign, I find out what is working and what it is about the current brand they want to change. From there, I have a good foundation to start exploring ideas and solutions for a logo identity that is unique and memorable, and creatively represents who they are.”

We wanted to address a few things in our rebrand. “Over the years we'd received a few lighthearted remarks around people having a hard time reading the cursive, mistaking the F for a T—which would read TableVision,” says Bob Flynn, FableVision’s Director of Art and Animation. Therefore, we focused on improving legibility and creating a logo that works well on both white and black.

Our new logo!

“I was tasked with the following goals,” says Jamie. “I needed to keep the ‘hand of the artist’ feel, make the logo more legible, modernize it a bit, keep it fun and playful, explore a burst-like element, develop an ‘FV’ mark, and add the word ‘studios.’”

As Jamie researched, sketched, and brainstormed, and we weighed in on her suggestions, we decided on a typographically playful option. This helped with legibility, while staying fun and creative. She incorporated the word “studios” and suggested a gray background, that our team later turned into a gray burst, to recall our original red, orange, and yellow starburst.

We love the gray burst and swirl icon for the “O.”

In one of our early sketches, Jamie explored replacing the “O” in FableVision with various doodles. “The next step was to explore ways to incorporate a hand-drawn element using the ‘O’ in FableVision and pushing the playfulness of the typography even further,” explains Jamie. She sent a few options for consideration. Among them was the gold swirl you see here. “Through this collaborative process, we created the swirl icon for the ‘O.’ It pays homage to FableVision’s use of watercolors throughout the years and the ‘hand of the artist’ aesthetic that FableVision loves so much.”

Jamie had also shared a chicken, a baby yellow chick, as another option to replace the “O.” We couldn’t stop talking about it and when we asked her the story behind it, we found out that her daughter Kirra, a 15-year-old high school sophomore, designed it. 

“I was always encouraged to draw from a very young age and I’ve always loved drawing,” says Kirra. “I like to try out all different styles of art. I started making art as soon as I could hold a pencil—I can’t really remember not drawing.”

It was amazing to work with Kirra and watch her make her mark. We’re lucky to collaborate with young people during various co-design sessions on our projects, but to have her as part of our logo redesign process was the icing on our rebrand cake. We asked Kirra if we could see more of her doodles. That opened the door for a dynamic, rotating “logo icon” as Kirra shared her creativity and spark with us, and helped lead FableVision to its future.

Some additional doodles that Kirra drew for us as we workshopped the dynamic logo.

“I designed the chick, the flower, and the planet, and the chick is my favorite,” says Kirra. “I enjoy doing art as a hobby and it is something I’m interested in as a career. Listening to music while I create art is my main inspiration.”

Kirra’s flower and planet incorporated into our dynamic logo.

Our 16 icons – stay tuned for more! Can you spot Kirra’s drawings?

And we were certainly inspired by Kirra. Using her many designs as a starting point, we developed 16 changing icons. Sometimes our logo features Kirra’s joyful, pink flower, and other times it incorporates a silly, neon alien. 

We have more logo icons in the making. Keep checking in with us for fun icons that depict holidays, seasons, or favorite animals that are designed by our staff and creative community. “The beauty of the dynamic logo is that it gives us flexibility and reflects the joy and humor that we bring to our projects, while keeping our audience excited for more,” says Gary Goldberger.

And voila – after many discussions, sketches, designs, and brainstorming sessions, we love our new rebrand and are thrilled to keep sharing it.

We’re only 25 years into our 200-year mission and we’ll continue expanding our studio, partnerships, and offerings. We cannot wait to keep breaking through educational challenges and inspiring young learners – stay tuned for new logo icons and new projects!

Surprise! Here’s a brand new 17th icon that we just designed.