Chalk and glow-in-the-dark first, science kits second.

4M is the brand of 4M Industrial Development Limited, a toy company based in Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong. The company’s own account of its history begins with a date rather than a founder: 4M says its first product hit the market in 1993. Since then, it says, it has made craft kits, science kits and activity toys for children, sold through specialty boutiques, museum shops and department stores.

The early range was simple. 4M says its first successes were Jumbo Chalk and a family of glow-in-the-dark products, and that it branched into scientific toys in 1999 with the launch of Kidz Labs. That science line, now written KidzLabs on the company’s website, is still one of the main headings in the catalogue, and the company describes it as kits meant to get children questioning and investigating.

The name is explained on the company’s site as “4M – Four Minds”. 4M says four core principles gave the company its name: imaginative, creative, inspiring and fun. It presents them as qualities it wants in its people, its designs and its production process, and it writes a short line for each: an imaginative mind to see what the world might be, a creative mind to dream up solutions, an inspiring mind to explore new horizons and a fun mind to enjoy everyday wonders. The same four words close the company’s pledge to its partners, to keep making toys and crafts that are “imaginative, creative, inspiring and fun.”

Series names on every box.

4M organises its catalogue as a set of named series rather than as single products. The company’s website lists, among others, Green Science, KidzLabs, Creative Crafts, Thinking Kits, KidzMaker, KidzRobotix, Mould & Paint, Crystal Growing, Dig a Dinosaur Skeleton, Spy Science, Knitting Crafts, Little Craft Kits and STEAM Powered Kids. Each series carries its own short description: the company says Green Science kits are for young scientists who care about the Earth, and that the Creative Crafts series holds hundreds of ideas for children who love arts and crafts.

The kits themselves are named plainly, by what the child ends up with. Recent listings on the 4M site include a Junk Yard Drummer and a Mag Lev Train Model in Green Science, a Stitch a Doll craft kit, a Math Monkey in Thinking Kits and a light-up fairy door, a mini vase and mini cross stitches in KidzMaker. Every product carries a catalogue number, and the website shows each kit under its series name followed by the product title, so the series works as a brand within the brand.

Design is kept at home, in the company’s telling. 4M says its catalogue is continually revamped by its own Hong Kong design team, and that the company keeps its roots in the city’s community of young artists and designers. It says it has an ongoing partnership with The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, through the university’s Co-operative Workshop for aspiring commercial designers. On packaging, the company says it uses recyclable materials and tries to make the box itself part of the activity.

The series list keeps growing. Alongside the long-running headings, the 4M website names newer lines such as PixoEasy, Q•Botz and Glowing Imaginations, as well as Science in Action and Solar System kits. The company gives each of its main headings a one-sentence promise on its home page: KidzLabs is introduced with the line that the best way to learn science is to do science, while Thinking Kits are described as simple crafts for hands-on little artists. The website also hosts a 4M virtual booth, a distributors’ zone for trade partners, a news section and a page of the awards the company lists for its products, and it shows each new kit with its series name, catalogue number and a short description of what the child makes.

Design and documentation.

Craft and science-kit brands sit at an unusual point in the toy trade. A single box may hold paper, paint and glue, or wires, magnets and a set of printed instructions, and the brand on the lid often belongs to a company that also makes books, art supplies or other toys, or that has been bought by a larger publisher or toy group along the way.

Because so much of the product is the instructions, a kit brand’s identity tends to live in its packaging, its project books and the way its parts fit together, rather than in a single object. The same name can appear in a toy shop, a bookshop, a museum shop and a classroom, and the company behind it may have changed hands or moved where its kits are made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who started it, who owns it now, where its kits are made and how its range has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A Hong Kong company with a local programme.

The company also describes a life outside the catalogue. 4M says that in 2013 its own staff formed a volunteer project called the TE4M Rocket Program, which takes rockets to underprivileged and disadvantaged children in Hong Kong to teach them about science and launch rockets together, and that the programme has been repeated many times since. It says it works with organisations including Oxfam, Orbis, the Hong Kong Family Welfare Society and World Vision, and it invites readers who want to set up their own TE4M Rocket to get in touch.

Hong Kong runs through the way the company describes itself. Under the heading “For Hong Kong Minds”, 4M says everything it has become, from its trademarks abroad to its sense of fun learning, comes from the city. The company’s registered name, 4M Industrial Development Limited, appears in the footer of every page of its website alongside its Kowloon Bay office.

For a design guide, 4M shows how a kit maker can turn a catalogue into a family of series names, each with its own one-line promise, held together by a short four-word philosophy. Compare a craft-kit publisher in our Klutz brand guidelines and a children’s craft brand in our Creativity for Kids brand guidelines. For this guide we use green, chalk yellow and coral with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep 4M’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.