I had the great honor to chat with Dwayne Vance for this exclusive Designer interview!
Together we discover How to become a toy designer from his amazing creative journey.

He shares with us the winning mindset to build up to succeed at becoming a toy designer.

What is a Toy designer?

A toy designer is someone who creates and designs toys for children.
They use their creativity, imagination, and knowledge of child development to make products that are fun, engaging, and safe.

Toy designers may work independently or as part of a team at a toy company.
They need to have skills such as drawing, problem-solving, communication, and marketing.
And they may also apply for patents to protect their original toy ideas from being copied by others.

I am a super fan of Dwayne’s work,
especially because of a sentimental attachment to the products he created at Hot Wheels!

Lightning McQueen toy design for Hot Wheels, Mattel - Sketched with red pencil - by Dwayne Vance
Lightning McQueen toy design for Hot Wheels, Mattel – Sketched with red pencil – by Dwayne Vance

Dwayne is a toy designer.
He has been influenced by Star Wars and the vehicles created for that world.

It was not always easy.
He strived to become among the best to succeed.
To do so, it is important to show and promote his ideas.

Also, to be a toy designer, you need a childlike perspective in creating designs.
As a toy designer, Dwayne on focus groups and works with advertising agencies to gauge reactions to his designs.

9 Key points to become a creative Toy designer

I wanna share with you the 9 key points from Dwayne’s interview:

  • 1. It’s important for aspiring toy designers to focus on showing their ideas rather than just their drawing skills.
  • 2. Being ambitious and setting big goals can provide motivation and drive to go outside of one’s comfort zone.
  • 3. Consistency is key in improving skills, even if it’s just 10 minutes of drawing every day.
  • 4. Rewarding oneself for completing tasks can help maintain motivation.
  • 5. Having a mindset of constantly thinking about how to improve objects or envisioning them in the future is important for designers.
  • 6. Sketching is a crucial skill that can be learned and improved upon during design school.
  • 7. Design schools focus on nurturing ideas and thinking about the future rather than just replicating existing designs.
  • 8. Design school can be intense, with a heavy focus on sketching and rendering.
  • 9. Students may be required to produce a large volume of sketches and renderings each week.
    The intense workload in design school is meant to push students to constantly improve their skills.
Lightning McQueen - Toy design for Hot Wheels, Mattel - Dwayne Vance
Lightning McQueen – Toy design for Hot Wheels, Mattel – Dwayne Vance

Know more about Dwayne Vance art and designs

To know more about him, here are some drawings and links to his fantastic work!

You can find more about Dwayne’s work below:

Dwayne Vance Behance portfolio: https://www.behance.net/FutureElements

Dwayne Vance book: https://www.facebook.com/MastersOfChickenScratch/

Store for the product: Master Of Chicken Scratch

See you in the video,
and feel free to share it with anyone who might love it!

Cheers,
Chou-Tac

PS: Discover the interview with Product Designer Michael DiTullo

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