The name came first as a book title.

Kid Made Modern began with a book. Open Library records Kid Made Modern by Todd Oldham, published by Ammo Books and first issued in 2009. Oldham was by then well known in fashion and interiors: English Wikipedia says he showed his first collection in Dallas in 1981, moved to New York in 1988, designed under his own label there from 1989 to 1999, designed a home accessories line for Target in 2002 and 2003, created furniture and home accessories for La-Z-Boy from 2003 to 2007 and served as creative director for Old Navy. Wikipedia also notes his work producing books for Ammo Books.

The brand followed a few years after the book. Romper said in October 2018 that Oldham founded Kid Made Modern in 2012, and the brand’s own website today says it has been making products “since 2012”. In an interview with Out magazine published on 29 October 2014, Oldham said Kid Made Modern had launched about three years earlier, which fits that date.

In the same Out interview Oldham traced the idea to his own childhood, saying his parents had taught their children to make things, and said he wanted to respond to schools cutting back on that kind of making. That is his own account of the brand’s origins.

Publishing has run alongside the brand. English Wikipedia says Oldham has produced a number of books on style for Ammo Books as part of its Place Space series, with subjects that include the filmmaker John Waters, the off-campus housing of the Rhode Island School of Design and the Bedrock City theme park in Arizona. The 2009 Kid Made Modern book came out from the same publisher, which ties the brand’s name to that body of work.

Craft supplies on a store shelf.

Retail gave the brand its scale. Out reported in 2014 that Oldham had a collection of craft supplies for Target, and that a grown-up companion line, Handmade Modern, was coming to the same retailer with paints and brushes. Oldham told the magazine that Handmade Modern would have its own aisle at Target, stocked with quality paints and every kind of brush, and called it a miniature craft store’s worth of materials. A 2019 article first published by Artsy said Kid Made Modern products were sold online, at Target and at the MoMA Design Store.

The range is broad but practical. Romper’s 2018 report described the brand’s art and craft supplies, naming diamond-shaped crayons and fluorescent patterned paper for collage, and said the line also took in clothing for children. The brand’s website describes its current range as art supplies, craft kits, jewellery kits and holiday craft kits, and says its products are sold on its own site and through retailers around the world.

A museum partnership followed. The Artsy article, dated 22 March 2019, said MoMA’s education and curatorial departments had worked with Kid Made Modern on a line called Making with MoMA, with art kits and supplies inspired by the museum’s collection. It said the first capsule included a three-part sketchbook for the Surrealist drawing game of exquisite corpse, a collage kit and a shadow-box sculpture kit, and that the MoMA Design Store in SoHo hosted a Kid Made Modern pop-up and workshops from 28 March to 20 May. Oldham told the publication the aim was to keep the experience as open-ended as possible, with kits that point to artistic genres rather than to particular artists. The same article said a larger Making with MoMA line was planned for the autumn of 2019.

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.

From craft kits to bedrooms.

The brand moved beyond the craft table in 2018. Design Milk reported on 10 September 2018 that Kid Made Modern, which it introduced as the brand behind Todd Oldham’s arts and crafts kits and supplies, had launched a home collection for children of bedding, rugs, floor cushions and wall decals, designed to be mixed and matched to suit each child. It said the bedding came in themes built around space, animals and colour. Romper covered the same launch the following month, describing quilts, pillows, rugs and decals; the pieces it named included an octopus quilt and sham set, a manatee body pillow, a space exploration duvet set, a rocket-shaped throw pillow and satellite wall decals.

The company describes itself in its own words today. Its website says it is led by a team of working mothers, gives its mission as creating “the next generation of creative thinkers” and links to two sister brands, the games maker Regal Games and the catalogue toy brand HearthSong. The independent coverage from 2014 to 2019 consistently presents the brand as Todd Oldham’s, from the 2009 book onward.

For a design guide, Kid Made Modern shows how a designer’s name and a book title can turn into a whole children’s range, from crayons and collage paper to museum kits and bedding, while keeping the look of a modern studio rather than a toy shop. Compare a long-running art-supply maker in our Crayola brand guidelines and a fellow craft-kit publisher in our Klutz brand guidelines. For this guide we use studio teal, tangerine and fluoro pink with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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