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Little Dolphins by the Sea is a multi-cultural preschool & transitional kindergarten located in Santa Monica, CA. a+ was asked in 2015 to re-brand the school’s website & amplify its visual language. In 2019 we refreshed the brand once more, and to this day serve as the school’s out-of-house marketing & communication firm, helping it both maintain & evolve the early childhood institution’s commitment to clear, trusted, beautiful & authentic communication. What's beautiful about a long-term creative collaboration is building creatively in the most dynamic synergistic way. We look forward to each activation, design project. Most recently, we're loving the newly released school merch!
“The tagline we created for this school captures everything we were inspired by and sought to reflect back: ‘Community, curiosity & creativity’. Our longest standing client, Little Dolphins holds a special place in our hearts & is often our team’s favorite on-going project to work on.”
Founded in 1992 in the Head of School’s home, the brand is personal to a+ because this school’s pedagogy speaks very much to how we set out to create: with high-level source material, expressed authentically, individually, and most importantly, with humanity. Rooted in an anti-bias curriculum, as well as an arts program based on the greats, this pre-school distills its individualized education to each child & family, providing an experience like no other. The first building block in the family of schools that is the ‘Seven Arrows Way of Education,’the preschool is what came first, so its legacy is tremendously important to uphold.
Families interested in the very best offering in early-childhood education. Serving the community living on, or moving to, the west-side of Los Angeles, the pre-school is located in Santa Monica California.
Inspirations include: BauHaus, Dr. Seuss, Matisse, United Colors of Benton, the ‘building blocks of nature,’ as well as the Chumash Native American Indians from which the school drew much inspiration, given that it was founded in Pacific Palisades, and had its second long-term home in the heart of Temescal Gateway Park, where the institution resided for 13 beautiful years. Of course, the dolphins from the local coast-line are a constant presence in our source of inspiration.
An educational brand that is over 35 years old has a tremendous legacy that has to be upheld. We are honored & humbled that soon after a+ was charged with the branding & marketing for the school, 9 hears ago, it’s wait-list has never been empty, and in its’ 30 year history, it has never been more competitive to get in than it is now. One of the most flattering comments overheard from a parent was “With Little Dolphins, you always know what you will get; its communication feels grounded; clear and like I can trust in it.” What else could we hope for?
The core & original elements of the brand have stayed & continue to sing to this day – from the logo, to the dolphin mascot, to the preschool’s unique blue. By marrying the strength of the original brand elements, with the layered-ness of the more complete and unified brand identity – down to the most institutional clear typography we could get:The Helvetica Neue and Helvetica STD family, we always seek to communicate clearly & with style.
The shapes are always framed within the context of a very clear lay-outing language that creates structures & systems, which allow the creative to shine, while still delivered ordered communications. This flexible brand language has allowed us to create event-specific collateral structure for each of the touch-points of the school, from educational programming like their parent speaker-series, to after-school and summer camp programming, to core items like the daily schedule & applications, and new parent hand books.
From web to mobile, we wanted the brand to deliver & attract the audience that would bring the next generation of ‘Little Dolphins’ to the school.
One will see plenty of playful, yet structured BauHaus elements – “building blocks” – present in this brand. When we revamped the identify in 2019, we crated this language of shapes, which provides infinite, yet easy iterative options to keep the brand fresh, without requiring reinvention year after year.
"Working with A+ has been an absolute pleasure! From the moment we engaged the team to help overhaul and relaunch Little Dolphins By The Sea Preschool website and revamp the brand, I was impressed by their professionalism, dedication and expertise. The quality of work at a+ is exceptional and their attention to detail is evident in every project we work on together.” Andrea truly listened to what we were looking to achieve and delivered beyond expectations! The a+ team seamlessly implemented creative and innovative solutions for our new website, which in turn has helped us operate more efficiently and ultimately attract a larger client base. We look forward to our yearly refresh of marketing materials (including print, digital and merchandise), which are always creative & playful––exactly what we are always wanting to portray. a+ completely spearheaded our newly launched merchandise collection, and has quickly become a fan favorite amongst the community. From design, execution, website & inventory management, as well as sales strategy & marketing collaterals, they have handled this project end-to-end, which was so helpful and amazing. The team at a+ is friendly, responsive and always willing to go the extra mile to ensure our satisfaction. Our scope of work with them has organically grown since we began working together in 2016 and we now rely on their creative guidance on a much broader scale as our Agency of Record. I'm grateful for this collaboration with a+ and look forward to our continued partnership for years to come."
From working with past parent volunteers, to eventually migrating & building the site from scratch again with Webflow, a+ continues to serve as the school’s go-to marketing, communication, strategic brand & technology partner. We seek to integrate the companies goals, with its needs for the year, while maintaining flexibility so the parent body can also support as this is a meaningful and important part of the school’s philosophy for building community through participation.
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