Featured image for "Play Made Here."

"Play Made Here."

by Theresa Christine Johnson on 07/14/2016 | 3 Minute Read

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From their lesser-known toys and games, such as Sing-a-ma-jigs and Bug Racers, to the more familiar ones like Barbie and Hot Wheels, Mattel is responsible for engaging the imaginations and creating fun and joy in the lives of hundreds of thousands of children worldwide. The Dieline toured the headquarters in El Segundo, California, but even an insider’s look couldn’t show the grand scope of everything that is Mattel. What started out as a small toys company by Ruth and Elliot Handler in the 1940s has become a symbol of childhood, filling basically anyone who hears the name with joy or nostalgia.

Large companies tend to have a reputation for impersonal working environments that bore and stifle the imagination. While Mattel is global, it still embraces what they do best: create toys for children. This simply can’t be done in a typical, fluorescent-lit cubicle and sitting in a space that’s identical to your neighbor’s. Instead, walking down the aisles of designers working at Mattel is a little like peeking into each person’s childhood bedrooms—posters, banners, toys, pictures, and knick knacks scattered about. Each workspace belongs to a vital player in the Mattel design process, and a glance at the individual spaces tells us much more about the process of each person than they ever could themselves, from precisely organized and color coordinated to a complete and hectic sensory overload.

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Designing for Mattel goes beyond merely designing for kids, though. It means designing for parents, it means designing for a price point, it means designing for literally millions of people. Barbie not only needs layers of face paint, a custom-designed hairstyle, a fashion designer, and slick packaging, but Barbie needs to be something that can realistically be produced and appeal to the parents or family members buying it.

As Ruth and Elliot were quoted as saying, “The heart of Mattel is design and development.” While it certainly must be an absolute blast developing custom hairstyles for Barbie or testing Hot Wheels cars to see which one is fastest, it’s clear that Mattel’s success comes from understanding the bigger picture. This is more than just creating a toy—this is making room for possibilities and sparking imaginations, both in the design process and in the final product.