BY DESIGN
Brad Reese, ID 04 Toy Designer, Kids II
Brad Reese has been balancing his inner child with his inner designer his whole life. As a kid, Reese was obsessed with model building, doodling and creating things, and he even took an early architecture class just so he could learn how to construct intricate balsa-wood structures. Fast forward a few decades, and Reese is still at it. Today the Tech grad works as director of industrial design for Kids II, an Atlanta-based manufacturer of infant toys and gear. He currently manages a team of designers for some of his company’s notable brands, including Bright Starts and Baby Einstein, but he spent his first 10 years at Kids II as a toy designer himself. “I’m not going to kid you, making toys for a living is a lot of fun,” Reese says. “But it’s more challenging than most people realize. For one, it’s highly regulated in terms of safety, and closely scrutinized by not only government agencies, but also retailers, parents and child safety advocates.” Reese says the toy industry is also extremely competitive and fast-paced. “Unlike some industries where a company is expected to introduce only a couple new products a year, we’re designing and putting dozens of new products into the marketplace annually,” he says. Perhaps the biggest challenge of his job is designing for parents. “It’s especially critical to understand parents’ motivations and tastes, because they’re the ones actually buying the toys,” he says. “Unfortunately, toy aisles bombard them (and their kids) with sensory overload. You have to have an attractive color scheme, unique appealing product forms and good packaging or you might get skipped over. “As you can imagine, we conduct a lot of research—focus groups, shop-alongs, in-home play sessions—to ensure we’re making toys that
both kids and parents are happy with,” Reese says. For the child, it’s mainly about the playability, entertainment and learning they get from the toy, he says. For the parent, in addition to safety it’s also largely about ease of use. “Case in point: a Bright Start crib mobile I helped design featured a new way to attach it to any size crib,” Reese says. “That made the mobile very portable and popular with the adults who had to install it.”
GTALUMNIMAG.COM VOLUME 90 NO.3 2014
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