The data featured in this article were collected during a classroom-based study with seven- and eight-year-old children in British Columbia, Canada. The multiple purposes of the research included exploring how the development of the students' understanding of elements of visual art and design would affect their subsequent application of these same elements when creating their own multimodal print texts. Two sources of data were analysed for this article: the artwork in the books written and illustrated by the students, and the transcripts of the students' individual interviews about how they included the required elements of visual art and design in their artwork. Analysis of the students' visual text-making revealed how they applied and transformed the concepts under study during the research, and how the students' sign-making was socially embedded.