Little Troop find inspiration in vintage board games and cereal boxes for their Le Puzz identity

From packaging and illustration to web design and art direction, Brooklyn and Melbourne-based design studio Little Troop’s identity for puzzle company Le Puzz is comprehensive, to say the least. Audacious, lively and colourful, the identity embodies the ecstatic character of Le Puzz’s founders Michael Hunter and Alistair Matthews, as well as the wild, weird and wonderful vintage puzzles of the mid-to-late 20th Century that inspired the company’s creation. The identity system is directly influenced by the graphic language of vintage board games and cereal box design, resulting in a nostalgic and sentimental tone of voice. “We had a really fun time working out ways to bring the games to life through illustration,” Creative Director and Co-founder Noemie Le Coz tells us, “creating a really wide range of odd little moments, from grumpy apples to giant matchbooks.” This unavoidable sense of frivolity is also conveyed through Little Troop’s colour palette of choice, for which they opted for warm yellow as the primary hue. “The tone of Le Puzz as a brand is really optimistic and happy,” Le Coz notes, “and yellow, in almost every culture, represents these things most.” “There's also a default feeling to it which we loved, and a neutrality that allows the puzzle artwork to really pop,” she adds, “it ticked all the boxes!”