Nurri Kids

Building a brand identity for kids isn’t the same as making something look fun. Anyone can make something loud and colorful. The harder job is making something that feels trustworthy to a parent at 7am and genuinely exciting to a six-year-old at the same time. Every decision in this system from the typeface, the color palette to the textures and patterns was made with both parent and kid in mind.

The color palette pulls warm and saturated while still being energetic enough to catch a kid’s eye and grounded enough that a parent doesn’t second guess it. This palette is doing two jobs at once by pulling warm primaries anchored by a navy base tone. Each flavor has its own color territory which does something important for the brand long term: it gives each Nurrd character a home color, so as the line grows, new flavors and new characters can join the system without needing a rebuild from scratch.

Typography for a kids brand tends to go one of two ways: bubbly and soft to the point of feeling babyish, or bold and blocky in a way that reads more like a toy aisle than. a nutrition product. We needed something in between playful but bold. Paytone One does that job. at large sizes it has enough personality to feel like part of the brand world. At small sizes like nutritional callouts, ingredient lists, the fine print parents actually read, Poppins Regular is used.

Texture was one of the earlier decisions in the system and one of the ones I feel strongest about. A scribbled, sketchy texture gives the colors and type fields depth and warmth. Without it, the identity risks being too clean and crafted which pulls away from the reality of childhood. It gives the brand a handmade quality that connects back to the illustration work throughout the system. It’s subtle enough that most people won’t consciously notice it, but they’ll feel the difference.

The pattern system was built to work across formats we hadn’t full designed yet. Relating back to the scribble textured, we designed an abstract background derived from the outlines of The Nurrds characters. This pattern has been used across packaging and the digital formats. We kept the repeat of swooshes and swirls tight enough to read as a background pattern from a distance but detailed enough to reward a closer work. From this pattern, we then created separate swooshes and swirls to use as add on textures to assets like e-commerce listings, social posts and display ads.