Children building with wooden TWIGIT blocks and gears at a workshop table.
TWIGIT

Where Tinkers Become Thinkers.

01 · OVERVIEW

TWIGIT

A sustainable maker toy
store in Kitsilano, Vancouver.
Six kits in beechwoodand food-grade silicone, made to
be opened and fixed, not replaced.

Twig it: to figure something out. The name is the
moment a child works it out with their own
hands. I gave every kit the colour of its letter, so
the range and the logo are the same object.

ROLE
Brand Designer
Solo, end to end
CONTEXT
Self-initiated
Fictional store
Never built
SCOPE
Mark and lockups
Colour and type
Six product lines
Packaging
Retail and extensions
TIMELINE
6 weeks

02 · WHY IT EXISTS

Built from
materials that last.Built so a child
can take it apart.

Two reasons. The first is what it is
made of: materials picked to last
beyond one childhood, not one
season. The second is what happens
while a child owns it. Other brands
post you a spare part and an adult
fits it. Here the child does the
opening and the fixing, and
that is engineering before
anyone calls it that.

What the research says

  • 70

    new toys the average child is
    given in a year

    Dr Christopher Willard, clinical psychologist

  • 80%

    of plastic toys end up in landfill,
    incinerators or the environment

    Yale Environment Review

  • 12 days

    of structured block play lifted
    eight-year-olds’ spatial skills

    Newman et al., 2016

  • 40%

    of three-year-olds can copy a simple
    block design accurately

    Verdine et al., 2014

03 · THE MARK

A logo that
had to come apart.And still hold together.

Six kits have to be told apart by a
child who cannot read yet, so the
mark could not be one symbol. It had
to divide. Six letters became six
colours, one for each kit, so the
wordmark carries the range instead
of sitting above it. The letters are
drawn as snap-fit blocks, and two
shapes hide inside them: one
builds, one fixes.

Three children building with wooden gears and blocks at a pegboard workshop wall.
Educational Maker & Repair Toy Store TWIGIT Where Tinkers Become Thinkers.

Logo Lockups

Educational Maker & Repair Toy Store TWIGIT, horizontal lockup Where Tinkers Become Thinkers. Kitsilano, Vancouver
Educational Maker & Repair Toy Store TWIGIT, stacked lockup Where Tinkers Become Thinkers. Kitsilano, Vancouver

Primary logo (horizontal)For the storefront, packaging headers,
and anywhere there is width to fill.

Secondary logo (stacked)For shopping bags, hang tags, and
product labels, where the horizontal
will not fit.

Logo Rationale

The TWIGIT wordmark in its six colours
A wooden castle block with a notched top.

W = a castle battlementThe notches in the W are
the top of a castle wall,
taken straight from the
shape of a wooden block.

A metal Phillips screw.

G + I = a Phillips screwSet together, the G and
the I make the cross of a
screw head. It is the only
part of the mark about
repair rather than building.

Stacked wooden building blocks forming a small castle.

Built like the blocksEvery letter has the flat
tops and square notches
of a stacking block, so the
wordmark comes apart
the way the toys do.

04 · COLOUR AND TYPE

The palette
is not decoration.It is how you find your kit.

Each colour is assigned, not chosen.
It belongs to one kit and appears
nowhere else, so it can be relied
on. The type stays out of the way.

Colour palette

One colour, one kit.
Everything else is charcoal and cream.

  • MakerRed

    C 0 M 74 Y 80 K 10R 230 G 59 B 47Hex #e63b2fCastle Block Set

  • BuilderYellow

    C 0 M 28 Y 81 K 0R 255 G 184 B 48Hex #ffb830Animal Friends

  • MechanicOrange

    C 0 M 54 Y 91 K 2R 249 G 115 B 22Hex #f97316Tool Truck

  • ExplorerGreen

    C 76 M 0 Y 34 K 28R 45 G 184 B 122Hex #2db87aRocket Builder

  • InventorViolet

    C 43 M 63 Y 0 K 4R 139 G 92 B 246Hex #8b5cf6Robot Kit

  • ThinkerBlue

    C 89 M 37 Y 0 K 11R 26 G 143 B 227Hex #1a8fe3Gear Lab

Typography

Fredoka is the display face. Its rounded, blocky
letterforms are cut from the same shapes as the toys.

Nunito Sans does the reading. It stays quiet under
Fredoka and holds up at label sizes.

Fredoka

Display, headlines, packaging titles

Regular 400 · Medium 500 ·
SemiBold 600 · Bold 700

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789

Nunito Sans

Body text, labels, captions, small print

Light 300 · Regular 400 ·
SemiBold 600 · Bold 700

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
0123456789

  • Where Tinkers
    Become Thinkers

    HEADINGFredoka Bold 70048 to 64 px

  • Build, fix, and reimagine

    PACKAGINGFredoka SemiBold 60024 to 36 px

  • Where Tinkers Become Thinkers.

    TAGLINENunito SemiBold 60012 to 14 px

  • Build, fix, and reimagine the world around you.

    BODYNunito Regular 40010 px

05 · THE TOYS

The material
had to be chosenfor what happens
after it breaks.

A toy that gets opened and rebuilt
for years cannot be built like one
that has to survive a single
Christmas. Moulded plastic arrives
as one piece: nothing unscrews,
nothing gets replaced, and mixed
plastics are turned away by
municipal recycling. Two materials
answered that: one that holds a
shape for decades, one that gives.

A pile of small red silicone connector cubes.A pile of small red silicone connector cubes.

Silicone connectors

Food-grade silicone made from natural silica
(sand). BPA-free, PVC-free, and built to last
decades without degrading. Replaceable
in-store to extend the life of every kit.

One notched beechwood block.One notched beechwood block.

Beechwood

FSC-certified European beechwood, sustainably
harvested from managed forests. Naturally
durable, non-toxic, and sanded smooth for
child-safe handling.

The six kits

  • A red and wooden block castle seen from the front.The same castle from an angle.
    A red and wooden block castle seen from the front.The same castle from an angle.

    Castle Block Set

    Little Builders

  • A wooden dinosaur with yellow joints.A wooden yellow dinosaur from the side.
    A wooden dinosaur with yellow joints.A wooden yellow dinosaur from the side.

    Animal Friends

    Little Dreamers

  • A wooden construction vehicle with orange wheels.A wooden toy truck from the side.
    A wooden construction vehicle with orange wheels.A wooden toy truck from the side.

    Tool Truck

    Little Mechanics

  • An upright wooden rocket with green bands.A wooden rocket lying on its side.
    An upright wooden rocket with green bands.A wooden rocket lying on its side.

    Rocket Builder

    Little Explorers

  • A wooden robot with purple joints, front view.A wooden robot with purple joints, side view.
    A wooden robot with purple joints, front view.A wooden robot with purple joints, side view.

    Robot Kit

    Little Inventors

  • A wooden board of interlocking gears with blue hubs.The gear board from a lower angle.
    A wooden board of interlocking gears with blue hubs.The gear board from a lower angle.

    Gear Lab

    Little Engineers

Five children building with wooden kits at a long table.

06 · THE BOX

The box is board
and nothing else.So it recycles in one piece.

There is no plastic window and no
moulded tray. The whole carton folds
from one sheet of recycled board.
The front is colour, the toy and
almost no words, because it has to
work from across a room at a child’s
height. The back is where the words
go: what is in the box, what the kit
teaches, and the three
material marks.

One flat sheet

The die-cut flat of the Castle Block Set box: one red sheet with the front, back, sides and flaps laid out and scored.
The red Castle Block Set box held upright, with the castle on the front.
Six coloured TWIGIT boxes on a shelf.
A red Castle Block Set box. A blue Gear Lab box. A green Rocket Builder box. An orange Tool Truck box. A purple Robot Kit box. A yellow Animal Friends box. A small wooden clamp piece. A wooden gear with a blue hub. A wooden cylinder with a green band. An orange wheel. A curved wooden block. A wooden block with a purple ball.
The front of the red Castle Block Set box.
The back of the box: what is inside, what the kit teaches and the material marks.
The two narrow sides of the box.

07 · IN THE STORE

The palette
stops being a paletteonce it is painted on a wall.

The same six colours now have to
work at the scale of a room. Nothing
new is invented for the space: each
kit keeps the colour it already has.

A shop wall painted in the six kit colours, with the TWIGIT letters on it.
A second wall of the shop in the same colours.
Staff in aprons in the shop.
A staff apron with the TWIGIT mark.
Colourful cards carrying the TWIGIT wordmark.
A set of white business cards with the letter shapes.
The TWIGIT storefront.

Everything here is
built to come apart.That is what makes it last.

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