The Designer Toy Awards are back for their 12th year, and are now accepting nominations for all categories! Presented by Clutter, the Designer Toy Awards is an annual event honoring excellence and innovation in the field of designer toys. With categories like Breakthrough Artist, Toy of the Year, and Artist of the Year (among many others), the DTAs highlight the year’s best designs, concepts, and accomplishments by both veterans and newcomers in the diverse world of designer toys.
Due to Covid-19 and the world shutdowns, this year’s awards will combine the 11th and 12th Designer Toy Awards, and will be accepting nominations for releases, artists, and companies, that were active from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2021. Running now until 6pm EST on September 8, 2022, nominations can be submitted now through the website designertoyawards.com. And for the first time ever, colorways will now be accepted as nominations, so long as the base design of that figure has not won a prior DTA.
Head on over to the Designer Toy Awards website and answer their “Call For Entries” by adding those worthy from 2020 and 2021, and don’t forget... only nominated items can be considered for the awards. If you want your work to be considered please nominate it, nominations are confidential and there is no shame in nominating yourself or your own product!
How do the Awards work?
1. Open Nominations - Call for entries is open for anyone (yourself included) to make a relevant nomination. Nominations are private and will be used to determine the Finalists.
2. Nomination Committees - The DTA’s host small committees of industry professionals and collectors, carefully matched to categories in order to take the list of nominations and to determine the Finalists. The committees meet and discuss every entry, using the published list of award criteria to make their selections. These will be published on the website as the year’s official Finalists.
3. Voting - The DTA’s run two voting blocks:
DTA Panel: Industry professionals make up the DTA panel. They are charged with voting once per category for the winner in the panel-voted awards. Each year new panel members are added to keep our list as diverse and relevant as possible.
Fan Voted: The public voters contribute by getting one vote per category (which is ensured by tracking IP addresses and other means of maintaining voter integrity).
4. Winners - Winners of each category are determined by the most votes in each category. Clutter, nor The Designer Toy Awards, or Five Points Festival staff, vote in or “choose” the winners.
5. Awards Ceremony - The awards are presented at a ceremony on October 6, 2022, during the weekend of Five Points Festival / NYCC. For members of the public to attend the ceremony, they must have purchased a VIP ticket for Five Points Fest 2022, or purchase a special ticket. More information to follow.