Finding objects for children that deliver on function, sustainability, aesthetics, and durability all at once isn't always easy. I didn't see it clearly either. Becoming a mother pulled me out of the buyer's seat and made me pick up a pencil and start drawing again.
My name is Lali, I am a designer. I'm also a very stubborn person who believes that small gestures, which seem insignificant at first, can end up changing things.
In 2022, motherhood took me to unexpected places. First to a desert of uncertainty where I didn't recognise myself; then on a journey inward that let me find again the girl full of wonder I once was. The one who discovered the world through materials, who was moved by textures, and who found magic in colours.
I soon saw that many baby products didn't meet clear standards, either in design or in materials. I started sewing and testing alternatives at home, looking for objects more in line with the way of raising a child and inhabiting the world that I imagined for my family.
Growing up, I was lucky enough to feel my curiosity was nurtured at home. My mother, between afternoons at the stationery shop, taught me that enthusiasm and persistence are the key ingredients for building anything worth building. My father, a marine biologist, gave me the word that defines this project today: "cocolitos" (coccoliths).
In biology, they're the plates certain microalgae use to build their structure; to me, they were the small plasticine figures we shaped together at the dining table, where every game became knowledge and connection.
I start from the design problems I find at home: that's where I run the first trials and adjustments, where I quickly notice if a piece is comfortable, if it holds up to daily use, or if it needs rethinking. After that comes the official certification process each product requires. It's a slow process, but it's the only one that lets me sleep at night.
Photo: Sara Costa @saraseaside
The EvoClic bib changes size with a replaceable elastic band—as the baby grows, you swap the band, not the whole bib. The same logic sits behind the LexiPlay prints and the MerryCube stamps: one object, valid across different stages. I'd rather make one object that stays with you for five whole years than five objects that each last a month.
Finding genuinely local suppliers is a huge part of the work of keeping Cocolitos running—and it's what lets me choose FSC®-certified wood, because I know where every board comes from, or organic cotton with dyes safe for babies, certified OEKO-TEX® Standard 100 Class I, because it's what I'd want in my own home. The paper used for LexiPlay prints is certified too, free of chlorine and heavy metals. And when plastic is needed—like in the EvoClic's fastening—it only appears when it serves a real function, never as a quick fix for something short-lived. Production happens in small runs in Catalonia, in workshops I know personally.
"Coccolithophores viewed under an electron microscope, samples from the Maldives." Jeremy R. Young, Santi Pratiwi, Xiang Su, and the Expedition 359 Scientists (IODP), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
They're too small to see with the naked eye, and yet their role is enormous: through photosynthesis and calcification, they help regulate carbon dioxide flows in the ocean, and they sustain a large part of the marine food chain. Millions of these organisms, completing their life cycles over millions of years, have gone on to shape entire ecosystems and the Earth's climate.
It's the same principle we like to follow at Cocolitos—not through grand statements, but through small, consistent good practices in every material and every design decision that build something bigger, day by day.
Children's play works the same way. A print they point at with a finger, a bib they put on and take off by themselves, a stamp they press onto paper: small gestures, almost invisible from the outside, that repeated day after day open the way to exploration and autonomy.
There's a difference between designing for a child and designing with a child. Every decision, from the first sketch to the finished product, comes from watching real play—how they touch, how they look, what catches their attention.
It's one small good practice, repeated. And that, we believe, is how a bigger future gets built.
An honest look at where we come from, how we work, and the decisions we make when designing objects that accompany childhood.
