Little Troop adds a touch of joy and “kid-like” design to every single project

Since launching, founders Noemie Le Coz and Jeremy Elliot have worked on a whole host of projects for the likes of Apple, Girlgaze, Billie, Puma, Google and Taschen.

Date
18 February 2021

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After meeting at a party in 2012, Noemie Le Coz and Jeremy Elliot started dating. It was a meet cute, considering the two Aussies are from opposite sides of the country. Jeremy grew up on the beach in Perth and studied Multimedia Design at Curtin University, before moving to Melbourne to work in digital at BBDO. Noemie on the other hand is from Melbourne and studied Communication Design at Swinburne University, before starting out at a small design practice, Studio Binocular. Then, just nine months after their introduction, they’d packed up and moved to New York City. “We were both 24,” Noemie tells It’s Nice That, “ready for something new after four years in the same jobs, and I think naive and optimistic enough to pack up and go without a lot of second guessing.”

The two had initially planned on spending a year in the city – that was until they’d landed steady jobs. Noemie worked at Pentagram and Jeremy at digital agency Fluid: “New York was really good to us from the get-go,” she says. “We both loved the energy and the people.” Noemie soon switched things up and went freelance while Jeremy stayed full-time in the agency world. It was a “good start”, he tells us of their full-time experience working at different companies. “It gave us a really good idea of what worked and what didn’t in the agency model, and it helped us work out what we liked doing most, where we saw the ‘fat’ built into process in a lot of places, and where the opportunity was to take all of that and make something of our own.”

That’s when they decided to set up their own studio, Little Troop. This was in 2019, and the studio was founded off the back of their love of creating brands that the pair would buy into themselves. “We’re both quite playful people, we were both early 90s kids, but we also love simplicity and design classics,” says Noemie, marking a key inspiration as being Esprit, a fashion brand that peaked in the early 90s. “That was all about making an everyday ‘basics’ brand feel fun, inclusive and a bit aspirational.” Jeremy’s style, too, is very classic and restrained, but one that Noemie still vouches for as being “kid-like”.

Little Troop: Girl Gaze (Copyright © Little Troop, 2021)

A playful tone is therefore paramount for the type of work that Little Toop takes on. They now boast a combined 26 years of experience, which has equated to a vast portfolio filled with work for clients such as Adidas, Google, Puma, Adobe, AIGA, Apple, Girlgaze, Taschen and so many others. One recent project in particular, has seen the duo work on the launch of Billie – consulting on everything ranging from the packaging to naming, as well as the creative direction of the campaign launch and website redesign. Billie is a dry shampoo, lip balm and face wipes company, and thus needed a campaign to propel the existing branding into the beauty world, focusing sharply on clean ingredients.

“Billie was my first independent project as a freelancer,” says Noemie of how this project came about. “I designed most of the brand work in the nights and weekends while at Apple. It was the first time I got to take all of the things I’d learnt to do (and not do) and design a brand from scratch, with a lot of autonomy – taking my branding background and mixing in art direction, web design, packaging, the lot.” The identity, in this sense, was inspired by Noemie’s playful edge and the desire to bring a sense of optimism to the brands, an element that takes her back to the brands of her childhood. Think multi-coloured lettering, old images of Fiorucci, Apple, Esprit, United Colors of Benetton.

Another project is the identity for Girlgaze, an online platform providing opportunities for underrepresented female and non-binary creatives. “The main ask was to breathe new life into the brand and create a new digital space that felt fresh and energetic, but neutral enough to act as a container for the incredibly diverse talent it represented,” says Jeremy. Working closely with the founder Amanda de Cadenet, the result saw a bouncy rebrand come to life, featuring neon pastels, a functional colour-coding system and a neutral logotype, elevated with hints to the old Nintendo Gameboy aesthetic from the 80s.

Little Troop’s work is just what we like to see; it’s joyful and explicitly shows the care and attention paid to everything brief embarked upon. In the very near future, the founders plan to launch their work with Google – “probably our biggest project to date,” says Noemie – and there’s a dream project in the mix too, which involves launching a new puzzle company. But it doesn’t stop there; they also plan to launch the site for a new yoga brand, some interiors work for an upstate store and a new ID and site for both a chef and a director. “We hope to get back to New York for the summer,” she says on a final note. “Outside of that, we just want to keep doing what we’re doing.”

Little Troop: Billie (Copyright © Little Troop, 2021)

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Little Troop: Girl Gaze (Copyright © Little Troop, 2021)

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Little Troop (Copyright © Little Troop, 2021)

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Little Troop: Off Court (Copyright © Little Troop, 2021)

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Little Troop: Off Court (Copyright © Little Troop, 2021)

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Little Troop: Hilma (Copyright © Little Troop, 2021)

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Little Troop: Billie (Copyright © Little Troop, 2021)

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Little Troop (Copyright © Little Troop, 2021)

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Little Troop (Copyright © Little Troop, 2021)

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Little Troop: Hilma (Copyright © Little Troop, 2021)

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About the Author

Ayla Angelos

Ayla is a London-based freelance writer, editor and consultant specialising in art, photography, design and culture. After joining It’s Nice That in 2017 as editorial assistant, she was interim online editor in 2022/2023 and continues to work with us on a freelance basis. She has written for i-D, Dazed, AnOther, WePresent, Port, Elephant and more, and she is also the managing editor of design magazine Anima. 

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