Why you design products for children?
Design for children is a big chance of present a new vision of the world for a new generation. When designing a product for children, you have the opportunity of show and teach concepts they can absorb and that will help to build their personality and behavior.
What was your inspiration for this desk for children DOMUM?
Our main inspiration was the idea of teaching kids that their art and ideas are valorous. Domum generates an enviroment guided by montessori methods, where children have all the tools to create and expose whatever they want, everything at their own sight and prepared to better satisfy them.
How children respond to this play-furniture?
As Domum still not in production, we don’t have a precise information about children reaction to the product. Although, we´ve got feedback from specialists in furniture, and we have expectations that Domum will be perfectly able to satisfy kids and parents.
Suitable design for kids – what does that mean for you?
Well, more than all the obvious ergonomic questions, suitable design for kids means to communicate the right values. When designing for kids, we are helping then to build their vision of life, personality and relationships with the material world. It’s completely different than designing for an adult, that already have his opinions and character developed. So it’s important to think about topics as genre equality, sustainability and consumerism.
A few personal questions at the end: What toys did you play with as a child? Did you have a favorite toy?
Carolina used to play with Barbies, creating her own scripts and characters. I (Pedro) still playing with my toys, I have a growing collection of DC Comics action figures that are my small passion.
Do you feel there is a toy that every child should have?
Well, maybe Lego Bricks. They are really helpful in the development of creativity, and it’s always very funny to build whatever you want, imagine a script and play.
And subsequently: What toy do you think is a completely superfluous?
I think there’s no 100% superfluous toy. In my opinion, there are some toys that carry “bad values”, that could be simply adjusted and converted in tools to build a better society. If you think about the classic Barbie for example, it would be much more educational if the body proportions of the doll where similar to real people body proportions. By the same way, you can imagine that if hotwheels had girls in the advertisements, it could contribute to teach children about genre equality.
Get in touch with Carolina Balbino and Pedro Rocha via E-mail: