You want to be super passionate and optimistic because it drives product through final production and keeps your design exciting, but you also have to be prepared for the worst, in a way. When you work really, really hard on a line, and everyone internally loved it, and thereвЂ™s high expectations, and then when it gets to the market it doesnвЂ™t resonate or meet up with the expectations that were originally there for it. WhatвЂ™s your least favourite part of your job? That helped us to tailor the design to be more how they actually wanted to play. I had fun playing with the girls and getting information from them about what they liked to do with the toys when they were playing with them. Actually, the best part of the job is when we actually interact with kids, and see how they use our designs in ways that we donвЂ™t expect. ThereвЂ™s a lot more to a toy than people think.Дefinitely being creative, and being able to pitch ideas to my co-workers and have a lot of fun. So first you have the nugget of the idea, but then you have to consider all the other parameters to be able to get it to shelves. We have to consider box size and shipping, we have to consider testing, the price points, and all these other factors that come into the toy-when we really just want to focus on making a toy really fun and making it resonate with kids. I think people are often the most surprised with the amount of criteria, or constraints, that go into designing a toy. What part of your job takes people by surprise? Also, working with kids to see what they think of our ideas and seeing how they play with the toy, or how they like it. After an ideaвЂ™s been approved and weвЂ™re moving forward, we get to make an idea come to life-so a lot of development work, which is making specs for our counterparts in Asia to understand what we want to accomplish, and even travelling around the world to make that happen. Once IвЂ™ve got work to show to people, IвЂ™m doing presentations, and those presentations can be just to our small design group, they can be to other departments, or they can be to the whole company. WhatвЂ™s a typical work day at the toy factory like for you? That was my lucky break into the toy industry right out of school. My portfolio at the end of my university career was very kid-focused.ДЄt the end of school, Mega Brands came to my grad show and saw my work, and they picked me up from there.

So when I was designing products for school, they would give me a product brief like вЂњdesign a flashlight,вЂќ and I would naturally choose my own market and decide I wanted to do a boogeyman flashlight or something like that. IвЂ™ve always had a passion for cartooning and caricatures and just basically the childrenвЂ™s industry. I went to Carleton University in Ottawa, and I really focused on kidsвЂ™ products. I studied industrial design, which is a profession where you design products for mass production. I worked at a Montreal company, Mega Brands, for a couple of years, and then I moved to Toronto about three years ago and came to Spin Master. Stephanie Lemoine: I have been designing toys since 2007, so I guess thatвЂ™s been about five and a half years. Torontoist: How long have you been designing toys? That makes it super-fun to come into work every day.вЂќ вЂњItвЂ™s a very creative, thought-based, dynamic environment. вЂњWe play with a lot of toys-so weвЂ™re playing with our competitionвЂ™s toys, and weвЂ™re learning from them-and weвЂ™re also sharing ideas and inspiration from other things,вЂќ she explains. Now grown, sheвЂ™s channelled her lifelong passion for play into a most enviable career.ДЄ senior designer for Spin Master, a Toronto-based toymaker, her workdays are basically a kidвЂ™s dream. вЂњI was always playing with Lego and created a lot of my own games and toys and stuff,вЂќ she remembers.

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