A conversation with Henning Otto, Co-Founder of EIGA DESIGN, on building the new Katholino brand for Germany’s largest childcare provider.
Can you please introduce yourself and share a bit of EIGA DESIGN’s background?
My name is Henning, and I'm one of the two founders of EIGA (pronounced AIGA) Design. We’re a boutique branding agency based in Germany, which I run together with my partner Elizabeth Plus. We have a dedicated team of brand designers — a mid-size studio with a core team of about 15 people working with different kinds of companies and brands.
Our philosophy is to turn business logic into “brand magic.” For us, that means building a strong strategic foundation for everything a brand needs and then translating that into outstanding design and communication.
Elizabeth and I met back in art school in 1996, and later moved to Hamburg, where we founded EIGA in 2002. We’ve been working together ever since.
How did EIGA DESIGN first get involved with Katholino, and what was the brief when they came to you? What problem or goal were they trying to address?
We’ve been working for the Archdiocese of Cologne, which is where the organization behind Katholino Child Care grew from. The first meeting was with the Archdiocese, and they told us about their ambition to build their own childcare provider — not just another provider, but the biggest in Germany.
They already manage hundreds of kindergartens, but these kindergartens were operating like separate entities. The goal of Katholino is to bring around 500 of these kindergartens together under one roof, one shared identity. That’s when EIGA joined the process, at a very early stage.
They asked us how this idea could become a brand. It was very important for them to create something that didn’t just “sit on top” but invited everyone to co-create — parents, children, and especially the people running the kindergartens. These groups are essential because they shape the everyday experience and contribute directly to what this organization stands for.
So, we ran several workshops to build the brand strategy. The core idea was co-creation, which led to the value proposition “Gemeinsam Kindheit erschaffen” — meaning creating or shaping childhood together. This became the guiding thought for everyone involved, from top management to the staff in each kindergarten and the parents.
The focus was always on doing the best for the children and giving them a good experience during their short time in kindergarten. That became the strategic basis for everything we built afterward.
Image courtesy by EIGA Design
Image courtesy by EIGA Design
How long did the entire design process take, from starting the strategy to rolling it out?
Sometimes the best processes happen under tight timelines, because they force both the client and the design team to make clear decisions. That was the case here. We actually began at the end of 2024 with the brand strategy. There was also an important legal milestone coming up — the official founding date in January — so we had to provide the first ideas early and work in parallel on naming and some organizational topics.
We started the brand strategy workshops in late 2024, delivered the first drafts and design rules in early 2025, and then the client informed us about the next big milestone in April. That’s when they planned their first internal announcement that Katholino was officially being founded. They also had their first meeting with people from the kindergartens, and the ambition was to show the branding at that time. So we were tied to this ambitious timeline, but it helped us keep moving forward week by week.
Image courtesy by EIGA Design
After the first launch in April, they entered the next phase — legally claiming and integrating the kindergartens. This is happening in several waves, not all 500 at once. And this next phase is important, because our idea is that every individual kindergarten receives its own symbol that connects to the main symbol of the childcare provider.
So we have the main logo of the umbrella brand, and each kindergarten uses the trademark logo but can add its own layer to it. They can choose from a set of design elements to create their individual symbol for their individual house. This is all part of the co-creation thinking.
Image courtesy by EIGA Design
Were there any unexpected design challenges — something that seemed simple at first but became complex once you got into it?
There wasn’t anything massively complicated in terms of the design itself — the main pressure point was really the tight timeline and the milestones we had to meet. But once we committed to the co-creation idea, things became more of an administrative challenge.
Suddenly we had to think about how to create 500 different versions of a logo without drowning in versions, files, and color adaptations, and how these would also work in a one-color version for things like stamps.
Image courtesy by EIGA Design
The idea itself was simple: every kindergarten should have its own symbol. Everyone loved that and said, “This is co-creation!” But then we had to figure out how to visualize all these logos, how to share them with the kindergartens, and how to create all the final files.
It’s something we’re still working on because it’s an ongoing process, and it turned out to be a challenge we didn’t fully anticipate in the concept phase.
Image courtesy by EIGA Design
The brand uses a broad spectrum of color. Was there a specific strategy or reasoning behind this choice?
There were a few different perspectives behind the color decisions. From a strategic point of view, we made a market survey and looked at which colors other competitors were using. We wanted to see if there were any gaps in the market — places where we could introduce a color world that felt completely new.
Another factor was the focus on violet. Part of this came from our brand architecture, because violet is also one of the colors of the Archdiocese. It’s not their main brand color, but a secondary one, and we felt it created a link to the Archdiocese without making Katholino feel like just an endorsed brand. It gave us a connection but still allowed the design to stand on its own.
The third perspective was practicality. We needed a color scheme that could be used by the people in the kindergartens over many years. The whole idea of the system is that kindergarten staff can use the design elements themselves. The symbols follow the DIN format, and we created portrait and landscape versions that anyone can print on a regular printer. This makes it easy for them to create announcements or simple materials using the design structure that stays in the background.
Image courtesy by EIGA Design
Because everything connects back to the DIN format — the symbols, the typeface, the color system — we also made sure they had colors for different seasons, like summer and autumn, and ones linked to Catholic festivities. Sometimes you simply need a red or a greenish tone for Christmas, for example.
So even though this wasn’t the main driver at the beginning, the color scheme became very practical and meaningful throughout the project. It fits the co-creation idea — now we can give people design elements they can actually use, and color is one of the essential parts of that.
Image courtesy by EIGA Design
The custom typeface DINA Katholino feels like a huge part of the new identity. What was the initial reasoning behind adapting an existing Dina Chaumont typeface specifically for kindergarten use?
We chose this specific typeface because we really fell in love with its expression. We felt it was something we could use for designs that relate to kids and parents at the same time, and it also expressed the brand idea of co-creation — every letter feels creative.
Another reason was the structure of the typeface. The letters follow the DIN format, which also connects to our co-creation thinking. The only thing we needed to customize was the fact that the original typeface didn’t include capital letters. We asked ourselves: how can we show kids the correct way of writing words, especially in Germany where many words start with a capital letter? Showing everything in lowercase would have been wrong for early readers.
Image courtesy by EIGA Design
So we decided we needed a full set of capital letters. BVH Type Foundry worked with us to create them, giving us the correct spelling system for the kids — and that became the key customization.
The original typeface already included a set of icons, and now we’re expanding it because we need symbols related to different festivities of the Catholic Church. For example, we created a Saint Martin icon for autumn, since the Saint Martin’s festival took place recently, and we needed that symbol along with others for different occasions.
If you revisit the project today, is there anything you would do differently — or something you’re especially proud you insisted on keeping?
To be honest, there are no regrets. I still enjoy having discussions like this and discovering that people outside the project understand the concept and the opportunity the design system gives to everyone who works with it. That’s the most important part.
We get feedback every day from the client saying they have new people joining the organization, and they all love it. They appreciate the idea and the tools we give them, and that’s really cool. Sometimes you deliver a logo, a design system, the guidelines — and then the job is done. And that’s fine.
But in this case, it feels like being part of a growing organization. With every new kindergarten joining, new stories and perspectives come in. Seeing that the design system works for all these people is very satisfying.
For someone who wants to build a brand system that lasts — not just look good at launch — what principle do you believe they should follow?
I think the most important thing for a brand system is a compelling story — a brand idea or narrative that feels tangible to the people who work with the brand, and most importantly, to the target group or community that actually engages with it. The story and the brand idea are essential. And for designers, it's important that we truly understand that story and even love it, because then it becomes easy to create the design elements and to recognize what doesn't belong in the system.
"As soon as you know the story, you know what’s not part of the story."
And once everyone aligns with it — the client, their teams, the wider ecosystem — the job becomes much easier. When everybody understands the story, the brand magic becomes easy to create and even fun.
