Working with Daniel Kim on his signature yoyo was a very interesting experience. With previous signature yoyos I designed, each player had a very specific attribute that I thought I could help bring out. With Daniel, his trick repertoire is so vast and diverse, that it was difficult to target a singular defining characteristic to focus on. I knew that this was going to be a challenge, but I didn’t really know that it would take over 3 years of R&D, and 2 years of prototyping to come up with a product.

Left to right: Proto 1, Proto 2, Final Version

We started off with a singular goal: Make a yoyo that makes you want to never stop yoyoing. We’ve had the idea of exploring double rims for a while, but we weren’t absolutely sure if it was practical to do with caps on. Daniel came up with an idea, what if we moved the second rim to a cap? The yoyo, we knew, would be really hard to make for assembly purposes. However, we eventually decided on a cap assembled in the style of an outer rim bimetal.

The yoyo was alright, but it lacked stability for how much heft it had. The concentrated rim weight, while making the yoyo spin longer, did not make the actual play better. It felt “thunky.” This was a scrapped design.

The second yoyo is a simple monometal yoyo with a slight recess in the rim, to create a double rim look. The idea, while good in theory, did not work out that great in reality. The yoyo had good spin time, felt good in the hand, and had decent stability. However, it lacked personality. It was no different than playing any other yoyo in our minds. We however, came up with a slimmer, more comfortable shape, exactly what Daniel wanted. It just wasn’t good enough.

We revisited the cap idea. We had made a capped yoyo before, and we wanted to change the way it was assembled. Instead of a direct connection to the rim, we added a small lip below the rim to further highlight the capped look. The press fit convex cap provides a secure structure to the yoyo, and transforms the otherwise hollow yoyo into a stable, nimble, and personable yoyo. It responded to Daniel’s subtle movements. This was it.

Capped yoyos are nothing new. They’ve been around for longer than I’ve been alive, and they’re still popular today. They aren’t as popular in the high end boutique yoyo scene, but is there a reason for that? Perhaps it’s because it’s so hard to make, or maybe it’s because it becomes the price of a competitive bimetal, without the optimization for competitions.

But that’s okay.

It’s not meant to be a competition yoyo. Could you use it in a freestyle? Sure. But that’s not what it’s meant for. It’s meant for you to have fun with, to hang out and come up with cool tricks, to mess around with. It’s meant to remind you why you yoyo in the first place, before you focused on optimizing your hop combo. That’s why Daniel yoyos. That’s why I yoyo.

I hope that’s why you yoyo too.

The making of Motif