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KRIS LINDQUIST PRESENTS AT ADFED’s BEHIND THE PIN

On Thursday, April 16, Little & Company managing creative director Kris Lindquist went “Behind the Pin” for AdFed in its first virtual webinar. Presenting to over 100 Zoom attendees, Kris recounted the creative design process of serving as AOR for 2019’s The Show. Participants got a behind-the-scenes look at the creative concepts that hit the cutting room floor, as well as the bold, experiential ideas that made 2019’s event so memorable.

In case you missed it, here are a few images from the presentation:

#design #branddesign #theshow

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Little & Company Uses Design to Help Local, Independent Restaurants During Shelter In Place Order

Little will leverage their creative expertise to create free, attention-grabbing signs to help restaurants quickly and effectively communicate current offerings to potential customers. This new initiative, The Little Sign Shop, will officially open for business on Thursday, April 16 at 9 AM CST on its website, littlecosignshop.com.

The first twenty local, independent restaurants who submit their information through the website will be selected to receive a designed 22″ x 36″ poster and corresponding social media materials. Little will create, print and deliver these materials to the restaurants free of charge by Monday, April 20 so the restaurants can display the posters and drive traffic to takeout menu options, specials, delivery services, and more.

The restaurant community has always been important to Little largely due to the upbringing of their President and Chief Creative Officer, Joe Cecere. Cecere spent most of his childhood in his parent’s small Italian restaurant which opened in St. Anthony, MN when he was six years old. Cecere’s first job was designing the nightly specials board at the restaurant, which ultimately led to his lifelong passion for design.

“I loved working with my dad to drive valuable sales through our nightly specials, and I could see how good design on our signs impacted the guests’ orders. Today, restaurants have had to quickly restructure their entire business models. It’s imperative that they be able to share this information with their customers effectively,” said Joe Cecere. He added, “With The Little Sign Shop, we’re trying to do our part through design to help them grab their customers’ attention.”

To learn more, visit littlecosignshop.com.

#design #minnesota #restaurant #signshop #news

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LITTLE & COMPANY REBRANDS GRAND VIEW LODGE

Who isn’t dreaming of a little getaway right about now? For your daydreaming pleasure, we present the new brand redesign for the folks at Grand View Lodge in Brainerd. Grand View, named by Conde Nast Traveler in 2019 as one of the Top 5 Resorts in the Midwest (Readers’ Choice), has been a Minnesota vacation destination for over one hundred years. Whether its lodging, lake time, golf, spa, stellar dining, family activities or their new North boutique hotel that you seek, Grand View defines the best that “up north” has to offer.

#design #brand design #pressreleases #minnesota #brainerd #resorts

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COVID Be Damned: It’s Time to Pedal Up

Little’s President and CCO shares his thoughts on the big-ass mountain we’re all climbing together. We’ve got this:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/time-pedal-up-joe-cecere/

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LITTLE KICKS ASS AT THE SHOW 2020

We designed, we submitted, we conquered.

Little was the proud winner of eight awards at The Show 2020 last week, including five gold pins and three silver pins. Congrats to our team and our awesome clients!

GOLD, Hello Pizza Branding System, Integrated Brand and Identity Campaign

GOLD, MPLS MadWomen Brand Identity System, Pro Bono Collateral – Brand Elements

GOLD, TEDx 2019 Campaign, Pro Bono Marketing Campaign

GOLD, Little & Co. 2019 Valentine Poster, Special Event Materials

GOLD, FSBC Single Can Series, Packaging Campaign

SILVER, Ad Fed The Show 2019, Ad Club or Marketing Club Advertising

SILVER, FSBC Crowler Series, Packaging Campaign

SILVER, MN Roller Derby Branding System, Brand Elements

#design #awards #the show

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Five Internal Promotions to Kick Off the Decade

Little and Company is thrilled to announce five new promotions across multiple departments within the company. Each of these individuals contribute greatly to the overall success of Little. Congratulations to all!

Chris Heimbold was promoted from account director to director of client services.

Traci Elder was promoted from vice president of marketing to vice president of business development and strategy.

Kris Lindquist was promoted from creative director to managing creative director.

Danielle Eisenbacher was promoted from project director to director of operations and project management.

Leah Gauquie was promoted from designer to design director.

#design

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Little and Bremer Featured on Schmidt List Podcast

In the 100th episode of business leadership and innovation podcast The Schmidt List, Kurt Schmidt dives deep with Bremer Bank CMO Erin Dady and our own Joe Cecere about what it really takes to execute a rebrand of a large organization successfully from the inside out. Everything is on the table: hiccups, building buy in, creating collaboration between agency and internal teams, setbacks overcome and the mountains climbed.

We couldn’t be prouder of our Bremer relationship and thank The Schmidt List for the amazing opportunity to document the story so beautifully.

Listen on Apple podcasts here.

#design branding insideLittle news rebranding

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Little Rebrands Minnesota RollerGirls and Launches Live 100 Panel

If you’re lucky, every now and then you get the chance to work with an organization whose mission and purpose is so strong, you can’t stop thinking about how to share it with more people. And for us, that organization was the Minnesota Roller Derby.

Last winter, the Minnesota RollerGirls, the premier flat-track roller derby league in Saint Paul, MN, came to Little & Company looking to rebrand. After sixteen years as the RollerGirls, their identity no longer represented how they evolved and who they‘ve become. They needed a brand that better represented the skaters, officials and volunteers that make them so successful.

We immersed ourselves in the world of derby and worked to ultimately create a new look, mission, vision, values, and moniker, the Minnesota Roller Derby. All of which were driven by the derby’s wholehearted dedication to inclusion, acceptance and all-around badassery. We were blown away by their community and realized these values extended well beyond the roller derby sport.

So we put our heads together and planned an event to highlight these values. And the Live 100 Block Party was born. An event centered around Living 100%, because being 100% yourself is 100% better. We let Urban Growler and the Minnesota Roller Derby handle the rowdy stuff like beer and skating, and we focused on designing a panel discussion.

The Live 100 panel discussion was designed to bring together a diverse group of badass individuals to talk about their common thread – living 100% themselves. And we couldn’t have asked for a better group:

Jana Shortal, News Anchor, KARE 11, moderator Jill Pavlak, Co-owner/Director of sales and marketing, Urban Growler Alex West Steinman, CEO/Co-founder, The Coven Kim Bartmann, CEO/Restauranteur, Bartmann Group Nina Berglund, Water Protector/Land Defender, Honor the Earth Jingyi Tao, Medical Interpreter

Jana Shortal eloquently (and hilariously) guided the group through an important conversation about getting to know and love yourself, dealing with tough sh*t and what it means to truly live 100%. Each of the panelists had a unique perspective which lead to a great conversation that could have gone on for hours. You can see some of our favorite moments on our Live 100 Instagram Highlight.

We were honored to be able to bring together incredible people for important conversations and help shine a light on the Minnesota Roller Derby and their amazing community.

#design #news #mnrd

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Little’s #Give40 Program Launched in Honor of 40th Anniversary

Going into our 40th anniversary in business, we knew we had to celebrate in a big way. And our Give 40 week was pretty epic. August 5-9, our office was closed for regular business while we spent 40 hours each volunteering with different organizations throughout the Twin Cities. Here’s a quick recap:

Monday: Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity put us to work building a beautiful new home for a well-deserving family. We even had the pleasure of working side-by-side with two of those family members. Our takeaway: hard hats serve a purpose and measure twice, cut once. Tuesday and Wednesday: Divide and conquer! While most of our team brainstormed a kick ass national campaign for MATTER, a small crew was over at the new Way to Grow office painting a bright, kid-friendly mural in their family room. Our takeaway: sometimes, time constraints lead to incredible work and drop cloths are important. Thursday: We hopped over to the Catholic Charities warehouse in Saint Paul to help with a variety of tasks from sorting donated goods to preparing and packaging food. Our takeaway: when it comes to making a huge impact, there’s no task too small (like packing 6,000 snack bags of craisins and pistachios, for example). Friday: We enjoyed a beautiful day outside with Friends of the Mississippi. We divided up in teams and canvased streets in Saint Paul’s Payne-Phalen neighborhood to pick up trash and stencil storm drains with reminders about keeping litter out of our waterways. Our takeaway: doing city-sanctioned graffiti is fun and hey, don’t litter!

Part of our ongoing Give 40 commitment involves getting other organizations to join us. After all, more people adds up to even more good. Quick to raise their hands was Sunrise Banks. If you haven’t heard of them, listen up. Sunrise is a socially responsible community bank and certified B Corp. With a strong commitment to doing good, Sunrise Banks already offers employees 40 hours of volunteer time each year. They joined Give 40 to raise awareness with other Minnesota companies that volunteer time is not only a huge benefit to employees, but that together we can make our state even stronger.

Our final takeaway: Giving 40 hours of our time gave us so much in return. We look forward to Give 40 2020, and we can’t wait to see what other companies will join our efforts!

#Give40 #volunteer #design

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It’s Been Fun, Kick Ass Interns

Summer has flown by. And what a summer it’s been! Our interns, Abigail (design) and Bella (marketing) brought fresh ideas and plenty of energy day after day. And as an extra-special experience, they got to take part in Give 40, celebrating forty years of Little. But, all good things must come to an end, and last week, we sent them off to finish their last year of college.

Abigail Grewenow will be jumping back across the river to the College of Design at the University of Minnesota to finish up a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design. Her ambitious spirit, curiosity, and constant will to learn will continue to propel her forward. From what we’ve seen, we have no doubt she will continue to give it her all as she heads into her career. Abigail notes that her favorite part of her internship was, “Being surrounded by so many talented people who really pushed me to keep improving my craft as a designer.” She got to put that into practice with work on a number of projects for clients including King Arthur Flour, TEDx Minneapolis, Way to Grow and the Jablonski Foundation. Want to see more? Check out abigailgrewenow.com.

Bella Kuebler will be making a trek back to the tundra of Fargo, ND where she will be finishing her last year at North Dakota State University studying Marketing with a minor in Management Communications. This summer Bella has been helping with social media postings, assisting with new business initiatives, conducting marketing research, helping organize company events and always helping with daily administrative duties. With Bella’s outgoing personality and interest in new business, we know she has a bright future ahead of her.

#summer intern #design #graphic design

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Little Selected as AOR for AIGA MN Design Show 2019 You don’t have to tell us the Upper Midwest is home to some exceptional designers. The AIGA Minnesota Design Show brings the best of the best under one roof. We were honored to design the theme for this year’s show. It’s all about the electricity that happens when design connects with strategy. And we think the results are powerful.

#Design #aiga mn #mix

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Little Design Featured by @MensJournal

Feeling the #BeerCanAppreciationDay love today for our favorite, Fair State Brewing Cooperative, from @MensJournal

#beercanappreciationday

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Joe Cecere Speaks at Creative Mornings And we listened. Creative Mornings Minneapolis closed its 2018 series of inspirational talks with our own Joe Cecere. Centered on the theme of tradition, Joe’s talk, titled What You Love > What You Do, opened with the moment he discovered his calling for design. Like most good stories, it all started with a meatball sandwich.

Joe spoke to a packed house about how being true to his passion for design helps him be a better leader to the crew at Little. Highlights included Joe’s name on the Parkway Theater marquee, live music by Reed Grimm, graphic recording by Drawn Well, a few technical glitches (because of course) and this quotable takeaway: “Don’t let shit get in the way.”

Now, because we know you’re wondering about that meatball sandwich: Joe’s parents owned an Italian restaurant when he was growing up. One fateful day, Little Joey put marker to poster board to create a sign for the meatball sandwich special. And the rest is history.

#design

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Little & Company Design Featured in AFAR

It’s a good day when we find our packaging for Fair State’s Clarity of Purpose on AFAR Magazine’s list of Avant-Garde Can Designs.

https://www.afar.com/magazine/artsy-cans-of-craft-beer-that-prove-aluminum-is-all-grown-up

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Little Hosts Ad Fed’s “New Truths” Event

We welcomed a roomful of industry folk for Ad Fed MN’s panel discussion, New Truths: Why Big Brands Choose Small Agencies. Moderated by one of our BFFs, Charles Youel, the panel included our own President and CCO, Joe Cecere, President and CEO at Hunt Adkins, Patrick Hunt, Director of Marketing Communications at General Mills, Eric Dwinell, and Head of Enterprise Marketing & Branding at Securian Financial, Ann Pilon McGarry. The general consensus? Headcount doesn’t make you talented. Talent makes you talented.

#MIX #design #agencynews

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It’s a sign

Can’t stop, won’t stop talking about how excited we are to see our Securian Financial work popping up everywhere. While the new brand officially launched earlier this year with an entirely new brand platform, redefined target customer mindset, brand promise, logo, identity system and the company’s first-ever national advertising campaign, our hearts were aflutter as the new logo was finally hoisted onto the building at their headquarters in downtown St. Paul. You’re looking good, Securian.

#mix #design #agencynews #rebrand #featuredprojects

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Little honored by American Advertising Federation District 8

It’s gold, Jerry... and three silvers for Little & Company at the District 8 AAF competition held last week in Minneapolis. Work honored includes Fair State Spirit Foul packaging (gold), Fair State Giantsbane packaging (silver), Macalester brand identity (silver) and Guthrie Theater seasonal campaign posters (silver).

#awards #design #addys #aaf