In the age of 2.0 moms, those of social and virtual sharing, born Toucanbox, a bi-weekly kit that demonstrate how to engage consumers can be crucial for the success of a toy.
Candylab is the story of a toy designer really passionate about vintage cars and with the desire to relaunch the glamour atmosphere of american modernism through contemporary wooden toys with vintage look. It’s a story that demonstrate how good communication and trend watching can make the success of a toy.
Innovation moves fast in educational design and, moreoften than not, winks to cultural and technological trends. It has been understood by Fisher Price, the toys and kid’s products company with a 85-years history behind, which few months ago launched a ‘communication challenge’ with the video ‘The future of parenting’, or rather the future of toy design in six key points.
To talk about Design for All means approaching design for human diversity, social inclusion and equality. Skoog promises inclusion through music and embodies totally these values: apparently just a soft cube with five semi-spheres on the 5 visible faces, actually an innovative and performing musical interface that hides unexpected applications.
How to fight the surplus of technology during kids days? How to avoid all the time they spent in front of a tablet? How to make the moment of play both active and educational? These could be three of many questions that the designers at frog asked themselves in developing Yibu, a wooden toy set to approach technology.
We live in a world where technology breakthrough run fast, so we asked ourselves how toy designers can use technology to educate. New technologies for the users change, and often simplify, the way in which we approach our daily reality and not only. Among many sectors involved there’s also the education: school is slowly leaving its skin made out of books, exams and memorization to wear the one of new ways of teaching, often based on learning by doing.
In occasion of Salone del Mobile 2017 it has been opened the show “GIRO GIRO TONDO DESIGN FOR CHILDREN” where you will have the chance to see one of the projects by TOY design at Triennale Design Museum Milano. The exhibition has been opened on April the 1st and will be on until February the 18th 2018.
VISIT THE official webSITe of the exhibition
It has been proposed a path in which the design as well as architecture are explained from the point of view of the world of children and children products. Not only design but also architecture because those two disciplines have worked in tight relation to create occasions of experience, play, storytelling, fun.
The first part of the path developed by Stefano Giovannoni proposes at first a selection of toys with a stron pop character, among which Metroquadro is featured. From there the show develops with different perceptive suggestions, from graphic art to sounds, that give company to visitors in the different sections: Furniture, by Maria Paola Maino; Toys, by Luca Fois woth Renato Ocone; Architecture, by Fulvio Irace; Signs, by Pietro Corraini; Animations, by Maurizio Nichetti, and Tools, by Francesca Balena Arista.
These sections are spaced out by focus areas dedicated to prominent people in the history of design related to education, such as Bruno Munari, by Alberto Munari, and Riccardo Dalisi, by Francesca Picchi with Studio Dalisi, to pedagogy and Masters, by Franca Zuccoli and Monica Guerra, or to the iconic characters, as Pinocchio, by Enrico Ercole. So do not miss the chance to see this very interesting and well-told exhibition and to see live this project by TOY design at Triennale Design Museum.
When we talk about autistic children and toys for them, we often associate a specific category called ‘special toys for special children’. It means that there are some toys designed for children with special needs such as autism, cerebral palsy or learning disabilities and so on.
Pooki, designed by Tina Tran Dinh, a student of the Monash Art Design & Architecture, is a toy designed for all children, but is particularly attractive to autistic children. The research to bring this project alive is started from
The incresing use of technology in our daily lifes is changing consumers behaviour, generating a thin line between the physical and virtual world, giving place to a new sector of toy innovation among analogic and digital.
A computer for kids can be something that could be difficult to figure out. Ok, think about something saying to you: “Hello! I’m KANO. Thanks for bringing me to life. What should I call you?”. This is the first sentence that the Kano computer says. Kano is a DIY computer kit designed to help kids assemble a computer and learn basic coding skills.
What’s the reason? Today, children grow up surrounded by objects that appear magic. It’s rare for them to actually know how a computer works. The main aim consists in teaching non-experts how computers work ‘under the hood’.
