10 Books on Toy Design

— Design writer Allison Arieff comments on Architecture on the Carpet:

“‘Explores everything from gender bias to class distinctions of construction toys and reading it made me wish even more that Lego would move away from promoting its meticulously directed kits and more toward less-programmed piles of bricks.”

From the Publisher. Brick by Brick takes you inside the LEGO you've never seen. By following the teams that are inventing some of the world's best-loved toys, it spotlights the company's disciplined approach to harnessing creativity and recounts one of the most remarkable business transformations in recent memory.

Brick by Brick reveals how LEGO failed to keep pace with the revolutionary changes in kids' lives and began sliding into irrelevance. When the company's leaders implemented some of the business world's most widely espoused prescriptions for boosting innovation, they ironically pushed the iconic toymaker to the brink of bankruptcy. The company's near-collapse shows that what works in theory can fail spectacularly in the brutally competitive global economy.

It took a new LEGO management team – faced with the growing rage for electronic toys, few barriers to entry, and ultra-demanding consumers (ten-year old boys) – to reinvent the innovation rule book and transform LEGO into one of the world's most profitable, fastest-growing companies.

Sometimes radical yet always applicable, Brick by Brick abounds with real-world lessons for unleashing breakthrough innovation in your organization, just like LEGO. Whether you're a senior executive looking to make your company grow, an entrepreneur building a startup from scratch, or a fan who wants to instill some of that LEGO magic in your career, you'll learn how to build your own innovation advantage, brick by brick.

From the Publisher. Children's picturebooks are the very first books we encounter, and they form an important, constantly evolving and dynamic sector of the publishing industry. But what does it take to create a successful picture book for children? In seven chapters, this book covers the key stages of conceiving a narrative, creating a visual language and developing storyboards and design of a picturebook. There are interviews with leading children's picturebook illustrators, as well as case studies of their work. The picturebooks and artists featured hail from Australia, Belgium, Cuba, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, the UK and the USA. In this publication, Martin Salisbury and Morag Styles introduce us to the world of children's picturebooks, providing a solid background to the industry before going on to explore the key concepts and practices that have gone into the creation of picturebooks.

—Surveys more than 100 years of school architecture, playgrounds, toys and games, educational materials, nurseries, furniture, animation, advertising, books, and clothing and published to accompany a 2013 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art,

Like Bruno Munari or Charles Eames, the designer Fredun Shapur (born 1929) made a particular daring and inventive contribution to the world of children. Between the 1960s and 1980s he designed toys for manufacturers such as Naef in Switzerland, Galt Toys in Great Britain, and above all Creative Playthings in the United States. From wooden puzzles to animal disguises made from paper sacks, Shapur’s toys still have the power to challenge and enchant, while his use of colour and graphic refinement remain strikingly modern.

From the Publisher. I LEGO N.Y. is an imaginative look at life in New York City constructed entirely out of LEGOs. Designer and illustrator Christoph Niemann was inspired to create a series of miniature New York vignettes out of his sons' toys after a few cold and dark winter days in Berlin. The former New Yorker then posted photographs of his creations along with his handwritten captions on his New York Times blog. Resident and honorary New Yorkers around the world responded enthusiastically to the clever and minimalist inventions, which captured both the iconic (the Empire State Building) and the mundane (man standing on a subway platform) in fewer LEGO pieces than one might think possible. This book includes all of the original images, plus thirteen new creations. The resulting collection is delightful in its simplicity and moving in its ability to cature the spirit of life in New York in so few strokes.

From the Publisher. In barely a decade, the designer toy craze, which originated in Hong Kong, has taken the world by storm. Children and adults, celebrities and design aficionados now line up to pay anywhere from five dollars to thousands of dollars for these highly inventive designer creations. I Am Plastic provides a colorful visual history of the phenomenon, which has energized not only the toy world but the global art community as well. Fashion designers, comic book artists, underground illustrators, graffiti and fine artists now lend their creativity to the task of coming up with innovative and striking new toy designs. Artists and toys featured in this stunning overview include Frank Kozik, Dalek, Gary Baseman, Bounty Hunter, Junko Mizuno, Jason Siu, Devilrobots, and Pete Fowler.

Also see I Am Plastic, Too: The Next Generation of Designer Toys

From the Publisher. Featuring the work of the best up-and-coming illustrators and creators of picture books for children, Little Big Books is a captivating showcase of what is state-of-the-art in today’s children’s books.

Despite, or because of, the ubiquity of televisions and computers, picture books have remained popular with kids and parents. These books have also not lost their appeal for illustrators and publishing houses—not least because a hit children’s book can serve as the lucrative basis for TV programs, video games, toys, or other merchandising. In addition to its presentation of cutting-edge visuals from around the world, Little Big Books offers insightful texts for those who hope to create or market visual content for children. These include interviews with experts about the educational aspects, make-up, and psychology of children’s picture books as well as the significance of children’s book awards and practical advice on publishing rights and licensing. The publication is rounded out with an introduction that puts current work into the historical context of classic books by the genre’s seminal pioneers.

From the Publisher. The Swedish toy industry has long produced vast quantities of colorful, quality wooden items that reflect Scandinavian design and craft traditions. This superbly illustrated book, including specially commissioned photography, looks at over 200 years of Swedish toys, from historic dollhouses to the latest designs for children. Featuring rattles, full-size rocking horses, dollhouses, and building blocks to skis, sleds, and tabletop games with intricate moving parts, Swedish Wooden Toys also addresses images of Swedish childhood, the role of the beloved red Dala horse in the creation of national identity, the vibrant tradition of educational toys, and the challenges of maintaining craft manufacturing in an era of global mass-production.

From the Publisher. Toys, fulfilling as they do one of mankind's most basic needs, have existed for as long as we have. From the earliest times both adults and children have used toys to simulate reality or simply to pass time. Renowned designers, artists and architects have always tried their hand at creating toys: from Frank Lloyd Wright's work with Frbel'S building blocks to Josef Hartwig's Bauhaus chess set that is still produced today. Gerrit Rietveld, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Breuer and Andy Warhol also designed toys. However, most often it was craftsmen and women—such as the seamstress Margarete Steiff (Steiff teddy bears), the carpenters Christiansen (Lego), or the cabinet-maker Hans Beck (Playmobil)—who designed the most successful and enduring toys.