1787799597_09_Brand_Guidelines

Brand Guidelines · Little Scholars School of Early Learning

Brand Guidelines Little Scholars School of Early Learning Prepared for Search Scope · Drew Heslehurst, Executive Director · August 2026

Source: the Little Scholars Creative Identity & Design Standards, the full brand guidelines document, supplied separately.

Name and spelling How is the business name written, exactly?

Full name: Little Scholars School of Early Learning Title case. Three capitals, L, S and the S of School, plus E and L in Early Learning. No punctuation, no ampersand, no hyphen, no comma before "School".

Short form: Little Scholars. Acceptable everywhere after first mention, and in headings, social and conversational copy.

Campus names: "Little Scholars [Suburb]", for example Little Scholars Nerang, Little Scholars Parkwood. The George Street campus is written "Little Scholars George Street" and located in Brisbane city, never "Brisbane CBD" and never abbreviated to "George St" in our own copy.

Pty Ltd: never used in brand or marketing contexts. The registered entity, The Scholars Group Pty Ltd, appears only in legal, contractual, financial and regulatory documents. A parent should never encounter it.

The logo lockup renders the name in all capitals as a design treatment. That is typography, not spelling, written copy always uses title case.

Common misspellings and versions you never want used Wrong versions of the name • Little Scholars Childcare • Little Scholars Early Learning Centre • Little Scholars Early Learning (without "School of") • Little Scholar: singular, ever • Little Scholar's or Little Scholars': no apostrophe in any position • LittleScholars as one word, except inside the social handle @LittleScholarsEarlyLearning • little scholars: lowercase • LSSEL, LS or any other acronym • Lil Scholars. This exists only as an SMS sender ID, where character limits force it. Never anywhere else.

Wrong versions of our program names • Grand Friends. Grandfriends is one word • Wonder Nest or WonderNest VR. It is WonderNest • Bush Kinder, Beach Kinder or Pram Kinder presented as standalone programs. They are components of Outdoor Explorers and the parent program is named first • Family Time Program. Australian English, but "Program" here

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Brand Guidelines · Little Scholars School of Early Learning

Wrong terminology • daycare or day care in our own copy: always childcare or child care • preschool or preschoolers: always kindergarten and kindergarteners • staff: always educators or our team • centre, facility or childcare centre for our own sites: always campus • Brisbane CBD: always Brisbane city

Voice How should your brand sound?

Warm. We are talking to a tired parent at the end of a long day, and the tone should feel like someone sitting down beside them rather than presenting at them. Warmth comes through specific detail, what a child actually did, what happened at pickup, not through adjectives like "nurturing" or "magical".

Direct. Short sentences. Lead with the thing they want to know. No throat-clearing, no rhetorical questions, no three-paragraph run-up. If we would not say it out loud, we do not write it.

Capable. The expertise is real and it should be felt, but it shows up as specificity rather than as tone. Not "our sector-leading pedagogical framework" but "every one of our educators is trained in Conversational Reading, which means they read with your child rather than at them."

Honest. We say the awkward thing. We tell parents the first fortnight is often hard. We do not claim to be cheap.

We acknowledge when something has gone wrong. This is the adjective that makes the other three credible.

The balance to hold Local in feel, expert in substance. A parent is choosing a campus two minutes from their house that they will walk into twice a day for four years, so it has to feel like theirs rather than like a branch of a network. Underneath that sits real infrastructure: a dedicated pedagogy function, qualified teachers at every campus, a trained language methodology. Too local and we sound amateur; too expert and we sound like the corporate groups families leave to come to us.

Reference points Go-To Skincare. The closest external reference. Plain words where jargon is expected, short sentences, second person throughout, warmth carried by concrete detail, generous with information it does not have to give. We want that a couple of notches steadier. A parent choosing childcare is making a bigger decision than someone buying a serum.

Our own best example: the Family Time Program page. "Dinner is made, the haircut is done, the dentist has been. You get your evening back." That is the register.

Words, phrases and claims to never use Sector jargon aimed at parents EYLF, NQS element numbers, "intentional teaching", "scaffolding", "provocations", "pedagogical documentation".

We use these internally and with the sector. To a parent, translate them.

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Brand Guidelines · Little Scholars School of Early Learning

Words that make us sound like everyone else "Nurturing", in written copy. It stays permitted in art direction, where it is an approved photographic mood keyword for campus environments in the Creative Identity and Design Standards. Mood keywords guide image selection and are not approved copy. Also "Passionate". "State-of-the-art". "Holistic". "Journey". "World-class".

"Second home". "Little ones", "kiddos", "littlies", "our tiny humans". "Unlock your child's potential". "Give your child the best start", every centre in Australia says it and it means nothing.

Constructions Rhetorical questions as openers ("Looking for quality childcare on the Gold Coast?"). Corporate hedging, "we strive to", "we endeavour to", "we are committed to delivering". Exclamation marks in bulk; one per piece at most. Emoji anywhere except social, sparingly. Any urgency or scarcity language about places unless it is literally true. Anything leaning on parental guilt.

Claims we are not permitted to make • Exceeding the National Quality Standard, for any campus that does not currently hold that rating. It applies to individual campuses, never to the network.

• Any rating language at all for a campus that has not yet been assessed.

• Any fee figure, range or "from $X", and never that we are cheap, affordable, budget or competitively priced.

• Inclusions framed as value for money or as justification for the fee. Never "all this is included in your daily fee" or "our fees may be higher, but they include...".

• Any numeric educator-to-child ratio, or our staffing presented as a guaranteed level.

• Guaranteed places, or guaranteed developmental or educational outcomes.

• Any comparison to a named competitor, on fees or anything else.

• A child's name, or an identifiable image without written family consent.

Do you write as "we" or as "I"?

We. Always, for the brand. The reader is "you", second person, throughout.

The single exception is content published under a named individual: a founder's piece from Jae Fraser, a child safety article from Melanie Excell, a pedagogy piece from Jen Haydock. In those, "I" is correct and appropriate, and the byline makes it clear who is speaking. Everything unsigned is "we".

Never mix the two inside one piece. Never use third person about ourselves, no "Little Scholars believes that" or "parents are invited to" in parent-facing copy.

Visual identity Brand colours Primary The foundation of the identity, used for text, key design elements and backgrounds.

Hex

Use

#2c4338

Dark green. Primary text, dark backgrounds, the dominant brand colour.

#5a886c

Mid green. Supporting elements and secondary emphasis.

#f4ece6

Cream. Light backgrounds.

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Brand Guidelines · Little Scholars School of Early Learning

Secondary Complements the primary palette, adding depth and flexibility. Used for supporting assets, highlights, accents and background elements.

Hex

Use

#106b5e

Teal. Icon circles and accent elements.

#86b499

Soft green.

#e1e9dc

Pale green. Backgrounds and panels.

Supporting Used sparingly, for emphasis: squiggle lines, buttons, calls to action and important information.

Hex

Use

#c2b708

Yellow accent.

#e6954d

Orange accent.

#162d23

Deep green-black.

#363636

Charcoal.

#d8d0ca

Warm grey.

#000000

Black.

#ffffff

White.

The neutrals, #162d23, #363636, #d8d0ca, #000000 and #ffffff, are part of the supporting palette and are frequently overlooked.

Brand fonts Primary: professional materials Used for PDFs, flyers, posters and anything requiring a polished brand presence.

Caecilia LT Pro: headings and titles Poppins Light, Poppins Regular, Poppins Bold: sub-headings, sub-titles, body and paragraph text Secondary: design elements and marketing graphics Used within design elements, marketing graphics and creative layouts to add variety, supporting rather than replacing the primary typefaces.

Hammersmith One Proxima Nova Strawberry Toast Kralhand JoyKids Regular Audhistine Social media. Where primary fonts are unavailable Literature. Instagram primary, for titles and body text Deco. Instagram secondary, for body text Poppins Bold, on-screen captions for video and reels, with an outlined variation for legibility against busy backgrounds Suggested caption colours: #2c4338, #5a886c, #000000, #ffffff.

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Brand Guidelines · Little Scholars School of Early Learning

The secondary and social font sets above are as important as the primary pair and are frequently overlooked.

Rules for using the logo The variants Primary logo. Two owls on a branch above the wordmark, with a decorative branch beneath. The default in almost all applications.

Secondary logo. Wordmark and branch without the owls. For contexts where the primary is too detailed or too small to reproduce well.

Limited edition and event logos. The 10 Years anniversary mark and seasonal variants such as the Christmas owls. Occasion-specific, and never a substitute for the primary logo in standing brand applications.

Each variant exists in a light-background and a dark-background version. Use the version built for the background, rather than recolouring or adding a container.

Rules • Use the supplied artwork files. Never recreate, redraw or retype the logo.

• Never stretch, squash, skew or rotate it. Scale proportionally only.

• Never recolour it, apply gradients, add drop shadows, outlines or other effects.

• Never separate the owls from the wordmark, or use the owl icon as a logo in its own right. The owls are a brand element and are used as illustration; the logo is the full lockup.

• Never place it on a busy area of a photograph, or on a background that does not give sufficient contrast. Use the dark-background version on dark imagery.

• Never place it inside a shape or box that is not part of the supplied artwork.

• Never use the event or anniversary variants as the standing logo.

NEEDS INPUT None. Every question in this document is answered from confirmed source material.

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