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“Everyone should recognise themselves in play”

The studio is full of activity. The photographer’s setting up the camera, the filmmaker’s checking the sound, and a third person is setting up the products that are to be included in the picture. And right in the middle of it all, a playful child is bouncing around.

Of course, fun toys should always be photographed and filmed alongside playful, happy children. But getting the perfect shot of kids playing with our toys isn’t always easy.

“You can’t manage children in front of the camera like you can adults, so instead we have to adjust to them. That’s a good thing, because it’s when kids are playing spontaneously that we get the best pictures. We work with a photographer who’s used to taking pictures of children, and we allow her to play and joke with the children while she works. We want our pictures and videos to evoke playfulness and make the viewer crave a good playtime,” says Emil Friman, graphic designer at Micki. 

Photographing children is not only a challenge, but also a great responsibility. When we take pictures of children with our toys, we’re careful to choose lots of different models that reflect the full breadth of our society. We usually search for models via social media, so are often in touch with a large number of different families.

“For example, we try to get a good mix of children of different genders and ethnicities. All children should recognise themselves in play and be represented in one way or another in our pictures and videos,” says Emil.

Linda Stjernqvist, a mother of four from Köping, found out we were looking for models on Facebook, and her daughter Nora took part in one of our photography shoots this spring.

“It was actually a friend of ours who follows the company who said ‘Linda, look at this’. She knows what I stand for and that I’m passionate about everyone’s equal value. Your ad was very nicely worded, I think. So I wrote a few lines about Nora, and before I knew it, Emil had called me,” says Linda.

Nora is a fun-loving four-year-old who enjoys playing with dolls, going to preschool and riding one of the family’s horses at their farm. Nora was born with Downs syndrome. Since becoming mother to Nora, Linda has gained a new perspective on what images are seen in the media.

“When you have a child with a developmental disability, you suddenly become very aware of what you’re exposed to in the media, what’s included and what’s excluded, what you see and what type of children you see in advertising and so on,” says Linda.

Linda says she’s encountered a lot of ignorance about different disabilities and thinks we all need to learn more. We adults, and especially those of us who work with products for children, have a great responsibility to think about what we communicate to our children.

“Nora’s friends have never been bothered by the fact that Nora has Downs syndrome. They say that 'Nora talks with her hands and we talk with our mouths, but we can talk to each other anyway'”, says Linda.

“Children are really heavily influenced by adults and their values. So we adults have a big responsibility to think about the signals we send to our children.”

Pictures of Nora have now been published and are being used in communication around Sweden and the rest of the world. But for Linda, it’s not the exposure that’s important:

“It’s not the exposure in itself that does it for me, but more that that’s what I felt you as a company stood for. Everyone’s equal value and everyone’s right to participate. It feels like you’re a brand that has the same values as we do.”

Want to see more of the pictures from Nora’s photo shoot? Check out our Facebook page!