Lironda

Lironda is an educational activity board in the Montessori tradition, built mainly from recycled wood with metal latches and openings, designed for children aged 2 to 5 to build creativity and problem-solving skills. We took it from market study through to a validated physical prototype and a full brand, and the product went into production and is now on the market.

We started before touching the design. We ran a market study and a commercial viability assessment to understand where a wood and metal educational board could sit against existing Montessori toys, who would buy it, and at what price it could be produced and sold sustainably. That work shaped the constraints for everything that followed, from material choices to the number of activities on the board.

The design itself was led by research with children in the target age range. Watching how two to five year olds actually handle latches, hinges and openings told us which mechanisms held their attention, which frustrated them, and which were safe for small hands. We designed the board around those findings, using recycled wood as the main body and metal openings for the activities that reward repetition and problem solving, then built and tested physical prototypes until the object worked in real children’s hands rather than only on paper.

Alongside the product we created the Lironda brand from the ground up: name, identity and the visual world around it, aimed at parents who care about sustainable materials and developmental play. Because the brand was designed together with the product, the packaging, the board and the story all read as one thing.