Children’s Budget 2023

First Focus on Children's annual Children's Budget analyzes federal spending allocated to children across more than 250 government programs, organized into 11 investment areas ranging from Early Childhood and Education to Nutrition, Housing, and International programs. The report is designed to give U.S. leaders and lawmakers a comprehensive picture of how federal dollars are and aren't prioritizing children.

I designed the full 174-page publication from the ground up, spanning print, digital, and social assets. The core design challenge was making an enormous volume of budget data feel structured, navigable, and visually compelling for a policy audience.

To achieve this, I developed a color-coded system across all 11 investment categories, with each section assigned a distinct color that carried consistently throughout the publication. Individual government programs were presented in tabulated format, broken into key metrics: Spending Level and Estimated Share to Children, tracked annually from 2018 through 2024. Directional arrows indicated whether funding had increased or decreased, giving readers an immediate at-a-glance understanding of trends without needing to parse the numbers themselves.

The report was widely downloaded and distributed, cited by congressional offices and child advocacy organizations nationwide as a key reference for federal budget and policy decisions.

To read the 2023 Children’s Budget, click here