Toy Design – Educational Slide Projector

Toy Design – Educational Slide Projector

Last year I was contacted by the Quois Corporation, a toy company in China that specializes in technology-based toys. They wanted to create an interactive slide projector and hired me to work up some ideas. The toy needed to have a projector lens, a slot for inserting cartridges and/or a thumb drive, and a method for advancing the slides.

Here’s a few of the initial rough thumbnails I came up with, just to get the discussion going (click to enlarge):

Projector toy design thumbnails

After some discussion the client decided to move forward with the snail idea. My next step was to develop some detailed sketches of possible snail designs. (Click to enlarge):

snail concept sketches

The client chose the first design (upper left). Here’s the final control drawing turnarounds I created (click to enlarge):

snail toy control drawing turnarounds

Eventually the project was killed and the toy was ultimately not manufactured. That kind of thing happens sometimes in this business. Regardless, I really enjoyed working on the project, the client was terrific, and I was still paid for my work. Even though the project didn’t get across the finish line I was grateful for the opportunity to take a crack at helping them out.