A baby box that doubles as a safe place to sleep

Challenge

The Yukon Baby Basket, launched by the Yukon Government Midwifery Program, gives new and expecting parents essential items, educational resources and a safe sleep option for their baby. Two things had to be true at once. The basket needed to feel like a gift rather than a government package, appealing to families across very different circumstances. And everything inside it had to be genuinely useful in the Yukon, not generic advice written for somewhere else.

Solution

We designed the basket around practicality, safety and a sense of place. Its sturdy cardboard structure takes a mattress insert, so the box itself is a safe, portable place for a newborn to sleep. The artwork draws on Yukon’s landscapes in calm blues, greens and earth tones. Inside, carefully chosen essentials sit alongside plain-language materials on safe sleep and breastfeeding, in English and French.

Results

Parents get what they need in the first weeks and a keepsake worth holding onto after. The box is a safe place to sleep, the materials inside are in both official languages, and the whole thing looks like it came from the Yukon, because it did.