A Plymouth College of Art student from Plymstock was part of a team which landed first prize in the Toy category at the Mojo Nation Student Design Challenge held at the Design Museum in London.
Jess Holloway and fellow BA (Hons) students Isobel Hazard and Charlotte Leadley were among 150 students from a number of universities across the country who took part in the 90-minute Toy Design Challenge.
The 18 teams involved were supported by industry professionals, including Seven Towns’ Elizabeth Moody, Triclops Studio’s Luc Hudson and Bananagram’s Rena Nathanson.
Jess said:
“My tutor Sam Rowe told me about the challenge because I’d shown a keen interest in game design during some previous modules. The event itself was incredible. The first half of the day was a conference, giving us some insight into the industry. We quickly realised that we were very well suited to be there.
“As illustrators, idea generation is integral to our field and we often work within tight deadlines. Considering we were a team of three up against teams of six, we wanted to try our best but didn’t feel the pressure of winning. We just wanted to have fun, exercise what we’d learnt that day and produce a pitch we could be proud of.”
Following a morning conference of talks and presentations from designers in the game and toy sectors, the students took part in a challenge where they had to choose between designing a collectable toy line or a mass-market game with a ‘wow moment’.
Jess added:
“The brief we chose was to create a collectable toy that had an interesting and exciting unboxing process. We began discussing toys we had as kids and realised we had all had the same one! We began to think about why it was so good, why we liked it, why we thought other children liked it and applied that logic to our own toy.”
Each of the teams taking part got to work with an industry professional during their ideation process, with the experts checking over each team’s final design before crowning the winners. Winners of the game brief were a team from the University of Sussex.
BA (Hons) Illustration subject leader Sam Rowe said:
“Jess is well known for exploring tons of different creative processes and experiences in her work, so I thought of her straight away when we were approached about the challenge.
“Like the team she gathered (Izzy and Charlotte), I thought it would just be a lot of fun and, given how different it was to most of their work up to that point, I had no expectations for them to win anything. I was absolutely stunned when they told me they’d won — the only illustrators among hundreds of product designers; and in one of the smallest teams too! I’m extremely proud.”
Mel Brown, senior lecturer and assistant head of school, Design + Communication, said:
“It’s a wonderful achievement by our students to win the toy category of the Mojo Nation Student Design Challenge. It’s such a great opportunity for them to explore what they’ve learned on the Illustration programme and put it into practice, all the while supported by leading experts in the toy and game sectors feeding them valuable knowledge of the industry.“
Billy Langsworthy, co-founder of Mojo Nation said:
“The aim of this event is always to encourage new designers to think about toy and game design as a future career, and it was great to see so many students enthusiastically getting stuck into the challenge and expressing excitement about our industry, all while creating some truly impressive concepts.
“The icing on the cake was the fact that so many students – thanks to the passionate encouragement of their professional toy design mentors – are now looking at ways to develop their concepts further with an eye on pitching them to toy and game companies in the near future.”
