Previous winner of Design Innovation in Plastics nominated for a prestigious design award

A previous winner of Design Innovation in Plastics has been nominated for a prestigious design award and is being formally launched onto the market in time for Christmas.

Innovative music start-up, Soundbops, has been nominated for Beazley Designs of the Year 2020, among what the Design Museum in London describes as “The most innovative designs across fashion, architecture, digital, transport, product and graphic design, as nominated by the public and design experts from around the world.”

The product will be featured in the Design Museum exhibition in London from October 2020 to March 2021. Visitors will be able to see the journey Soundbops has taken from a basic idea to the patent-pending technology behind the child-friendly instrument.

Soundbops – originally called DOTS - was invented in 2014 by Michael Tougher, to encourage children to learn music.  As a result of his win in the Design Innovation in Plastics competition, Tougher was given a £1,000 cash prize, a placement with one of the competition sponsors, Hasbro, the toy and board game company, and a trip to see headline sponsor Covestro – then Bayer MaterialScience – in Germany.

Tougher has spent the years since winning the DIP award further developing his transformational music education invention, which is to be market ready in time for Christmas.

He says: “We’ve used ABS to create the product and with safety and durability the key, for our blocks, which we call ‘bops’, we use friction welding between the bottom and top plastic parts to ensure they stay together and keep the magnets and electrical contacts inside.