01 / the brief
a little care. room to grow.
tender bloom does two things. it offers childcare in mansfield, and it is building a software service that helps childcare providers arrange temporary care with another provider. if someone is away, unwell or needs time off, parents should still have options. the identity needed to hold both sides together: the warmth of caring for children and the clarity adults need when making arrangements.
when we started, the word “bloom” immediately made us think of flowers. but before drawing anything, we wanted to understand the world the identity would belong to. we began looking into the history of childcare and nurseries, montessori, and how early childcare began in the uk. that gave us a place to start thinking about care, play and growth.
- relationship
- brand identity and digital design for tender bloom, mansfield, united kingdom.
- scope
- brand systems · type design · web design · UX/UI design · motion design
- our contribution
- identity concept, botanical mark, typographic direction and custom lettering, colour direction, and collaboration across the digital and motion work.
02 / the approach
how we shaped the work.
we started with research into childcare and nurseries. we wanted to understand where these spaces came from before deciding how tender bloom should look and feel.
we wanted the lettering to have different voices: something more regular, and something that felt like a child had actually made it. so we asked children to write letters. their handwriting became the starting point for the custom typeface.
we kept coming back to flowers. while walking down the street, we noticed a flower on a shrub and took its outline as the starting point for the botanical mark. that small observation became part of the lettering itself.
from there, we brought the identity into the website and motion work. the aim was to keep the feeling of childhood while making the experience clear for parents and childcare providers, including older providers.
03 / design decisions
let children leave their mark.
we didn’t want to guess what childlike lettering should look like. we asked children to write, and worked from what they put on paper. the uneven shapes and different ways they formed letters were the interesting part. those details gave the custom typeface its own voice, alongside the more regular lettering.
from a leaf to a flower.
the flower came from something we noticed on a walk. we took the outline and brought it into the wordmark, with a leaf at the t and a flower at the end of the m. we wanted the name itself to carry that little journey: starting with a leaf and ending in bloom.
gentle, with room for energy.
we wanted both pastel and solid colours. the pastels bring gentleness: that soothing feeling around children when they are comfortable and playing. the stronger colours give the identity another level of energy. together, they let the brand be soft without every application feeling the same.
a different voice when clarity comes first.
we used bodoni moda for the main wordmark and open sans for regular text, partly because open sans is easy to find and use. we also made an open sans version of the logo for situations where the name needs to be more pronounced and legible, like a lapel pin. in that version, the flower sits on the right, carrying the idea of growth forward.
playful for children. clear for adults.
the website needed to feel like it belonged to the same world as the identity. we wanted that playful feeling of children, flowers and discovery to come through. at the same time, parents and childcare providers need to understand what the service does. we also thought about older providers, so the personality had to sit comfortably alongside readable text and clear routes through the site.
bringing the pieces together.
we brought together a team, across motion graphics, web ux, ui design, copywriting and video. the identity gave us a shared starting point. the lettering, flowers and colours could move differently across each part of the work and still feel like tender bloom.
04 / what we delivered
from the brief to the finished work.
together, we worked across the identity, custom lettering, colour palette, logo variations, website experience, motion graphics, copy and videos. for us, the thread through all of it was growth: from the children’s letters to the flower, and from a childcare setting to a service that gives families more options.
the project brings both sides of tender bloom into one visual language: a welcoming place for children, and a clear way for providers and parents to explore care when plans change.