Saturday, June 21, 2014

Patrick Rylands, designer



Patrick Rylands designs toys. Children of the 70s like me will remember PlayPlax squares - interlocking plastic pieces in different colours that you made abstract creations with. Simple and elegant.

Anyway, there is a rather interesting interview with him on Toy News.

I post this not because I've been too busy for much blogable modelmaking (I have but that will be fixed next week) but because he has some interesting views on the future of toys and how they will be impacted by electronic devices.

"Over the years, I’ve been an obsessive collector of all kinds of things and it occurred to me quite early on that a lot of the information we get from anything came in through the fingers, not just the eyes. There are more senses than just the eyes and I do worry its just look based not do based."

Basically, there is more to life than staring at a screen. Something I think most modelmakers will agree with. You might even see some parallels with the current state of the model train world too. I did.

1 comment:

Sam said...

My Dad still has these at my Nans house! I used to love playing with them when I was a kid (i'm 18 now but love all the old stuff like this, I think they're great!). Having said that my Dad still does as well, I dont think you can ever grow out of gadgets and toys haha231