Cherish and Anthony Giordano came to me when they were still in the very early stages of planning their business, a new indoor playground in their hometown of Las Vegas. They had a vision for a space that reflected their family’s way of doing life: peaceful, connected, and environmentally conscious.
They knew their community was hungry for a new kind of place built on these values. As parents of young children themselves, they understood the search for family-friendly spaces that felt aligned with their lifestyle and core beliefs.
Instead of another loud, busy, carnival-like playground, they wanted to create a minimalist Montessori inspired space where children could have enough calm to learn through play and caregivers could take a moment to relax and connect with like-minded grownups.
In addition to that, they wanted to give their community a hub for peaceful parenting resources. Their vision included parenting, wellness, and fitness workshops as well as social meetups and events.
Their mission was to help change the face of parenting by providing a space that met the needs of both children and their caregivers and also non-threateningly amplifying the message that parenting can be done differently.
Defining the Brand
To start things off, I helped Cherish get clear about their new brand through the Brand Clarity workbook and several coaching calls. We defined Little Local’s brand story:
Little Local helps conscious parents and caregivers give their children healthy, child-led, enriching play time in an eco-friendly modern indoor playground so they can take a moment to relax and connect with like-minded people, knowing their kids are getting what they need.
They believe that children grow through play and that a calm, minimalistic environment facilitates the learning, creativity, and curiosity already present in kids. They strive to create a healthy, safe, eco-friendly, and natural space where children can take the lead in their own play without getting overstimulated or needing constant policing.
They understand that parents and caregivers need to also take care of themselves and have designed their space to help them rest, relax, and find community. They organize meetups, classes, and resources to help those who want to dive deeper and build more connection.
Their mission is to help families grow together by building a community hub in their part of the city. They want to bring attention to conscious parenting and evidence-based decision making in a non-threatening, friendly, warm atmosphere to help peaceful parenting become more mainstream.
Next, we defined the brand’s ideal client:
Little Local’s ideal client is the stay-at-home mom with children up to 5 years old. Even though the work is demanding, she loves being a mom and is passionate about parenting. She is a driven go-getter who puts a great deal of ambition and energy into her family life.
She’s active and outgoing. Her family’s days often include an outing, crafts, and activities. But even though she keeps herself kind of busy, she knows the importance of balance and also makes time for self-care, rest, and her significant other.
She aligns herself with attachment, peaceful, conscious parenting and considers herself very attentive to her kids and choosy about the food and products that come into her home. She takes a holistic approach to her family’s health that involves their body, mind, and soul.
She loves learning, reading, and researching. Friendship and authentic connection keep her grounded and she is always looking to surround herself with like-minded women who she can learn from. She’s empathetic, informed, mindful, and has a welcoming, compassionate personality that draws people in.
Then, we talked about the types of businesses they wanted to fit in with and stand apart from:
Little Local fits in with small businesses that celebrate family, motherhood, and community. Their offerings facilitate a slower paced, minimalistic lifestyle focused on experiences versus things. They have a strong balance between calm, soothing and energetic, fun vibes.
They’re built on strong beliefs and attract their clients and customers through shared values. They’re not afraid to speak out on issues they care about and take a stand, which draws more of the right people toward them. But they always do it in a respectful and even welcoming manner.
In contrast, Little Local stands sharply apart from the most well-known mainstream kids’ brands. While most large companies try to appeal to children with overstimulating, boisterous, carnival-style fun, Little Local draws the whole family with a more tranquil approach to play and an emphasis on both learning and community.
The biggest goal for our work together was to get Little Local ready for its grand opening. Getting the visual language right from the beginning was crucial to securing strategic partnerships, establishing their reputation, and drawing their ideal client.
Together, we decided that a business card, a promotional postcard, and a trifold brochure would be most useful in the beginning.
Choosing a Direction
Once their brand vision was clear, we got to work on tone and value boards to help translate the concepts we’d been talking about into visuals.
The tone words we chose for Little Local are: warm, happy, calm, and modern. I put a collection of images together for each word to guide the first conversation about visuals.
To summarize their brand message, we chose a handful of value words. Enriched play, growth, community, family and wellness summed up the deeply rooted beliefs that Little Local was being built on.
Using the visual cues of their tone and value boards, I created some style boards to show Cherish the different directions we could take with their branding. We both agreed that the black and white minimalistic style board you see below had the right balance of childlike playfulness and calm maturity that would appeal to her ideal client.
Designing the Brand Building Blocks
With a solid visual direction in place, I headed into to studio to draft logo concepts.
I knew a hand-lettered logo was probably going to be the best solution, so I spent a lot of time drawing and playing with the letters.
Cherish had told me she wanted her business to have a sense of local pride (hence the name, Little Local) and that she would be incorporating a lot of desert and cactus elements in the decor.
Having lived in Las Vegas for more than 10 years, I knew the landscape well enough to focus on the right kind of desert plants and animals. And when I drew this Joshua Tree silhouette, I knew it would resonate with the locals.
We started off with a simple black and white color palette, but when Cherish and Anthony actually started moving into their space and putting everything together, the brand colors felt flat in comparison. Cherish sent me photos of some of the art and decor they were using, and I pulled a color palette from there to match.
The main place these colors would live was in the set of patterns I would use for their marketing materials. This gave them a livelier and more playful vibe than they had when they were just black and white.
For their fonts, I chose something super simple to balance out the playfulness of the logo, colors, and patterns. The sans serif font I chose comes in several different weights so that there’s enough variety to create visual hierarchy.
All the marketing materials I created for Little Local feature good amounts of white space. This helps keep things calm and peaceful while the colors and patterns add energy.
The brand visioning process helped Cherish and Anthony set the tone for their business from the very start. It helped them get clear on what they wanted to create and how they wanted it to feel. And now that their vision is a reality, they can see the fruits of that labor.
In the end, Little Local had everything it needed for a very successful grand opening. They were able to secure key partnerships in their community, create excitement leading up to their opening, and most important of all, build the space they’d been dreaming of having for their own family.
“We did 8 weeks of extensive work with Lilly to fully get to know our brand. We couldn’t have done this without her. Her help in the early days of building our business was crucial.”
-Cherish Giordano, owner of Little Local Indoor Playground