The DTAs have now officially launched the nomination period for the 7th annual awards!

Running from now until April 7th (6pm EST), nominations can be submitted through the website designertoyawards.com.

This year’s awards will accept nominations for releases, artists, and companies, that were active from January 1st, 2016 to December 31st, 2016.

So Get Nominating…

Head on over to the Designer Toy Awards website and answer our “Call For Entries” by adding those worthy from 2016, and don’t forget… only nominated items can be considered for the awards. If you want your piece to be considered please nominate it, there is no shame in nominating yourself or your own product! Voting for yourself… well that’s a different story

How do the awards work?

Now in it’s 7th year, The Designer Toy Awards has honed its process, listening to feedback and adjusting where ever it makes sense. We haven’t made any structural changes to the awards process in the past few years, but just to recap, here is how it works:

1. Open Nominations –  Call for entries is open for anyone to make a relevant nomination. We rely on these nominations for the awards. These are not published on the website.

2. Nomination Committees –  The DTAs host small committees of industry professionals and fans, carefully matched to categories in order to reduce bias, to take the list of nominations and reduce them down to become the Finalists. The committees meet and discuss every entry, using the published list of award criteria to make their selects. These are published on the website as the years official finalists.

3. Voting – We 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 as possible.

Fan Voted: The public voters get ONE vote per category in the open Fan award. We do look at IP addresses, ISPN Hacks, and email address to reduce voter fraud. Each year we tighten up on potential attempts to “rig” the system.

4. Winners – Winners of each category are determined by the most votes in each category.  Clutter, nor The Designer Toy Awards staff, vote in or “choose” the winners.

5. Awards Ceremony – The awards are presented at a ceremony on May 19th, 2017, during the weekend of Five Points Festival .