LEGO
bricks are to some just another child’s toy, some the brick is a hard plastic object
just waiting to pierce their bare feet, however, to others, and myself, LEGO
opened up a brand new and imaginative world, which offered anyone the
opportunity to be expressive and enjoy life. And because of a Denmark
carpenter, Ole Kirk Kristiansen, this LEGO world has grown over 80 years. The
Kirk Kristiansen family, of Denmark, started the LEGO Group in 1932 and the LEGO
Group is still privately owned and is run by Kjeld Kirk Kristensen, a grandson
of Ole Kirk Kristiansen. For most people LEGO Group is simply known as LEGO.
The LEGO name is an abbreviation of two Danish words, “leg godt”, meaning,
“play well”. These two words describe LEGO products precisely. The LEGO Group is original and creative and has been doing
what they do best for years now. LEGO has done very well on focusing on the
concept to “play well”. In 1958, when the present brick was introduced and
launched, LEGO stuck with a certain kind of style, and has shown, through
design, creative thinking, little falters here and there, and having fun, that
design can carry on through the ages.
Most
people, through one way or another, can recount an experience they have had
with LEGO. Maybe building that epic “Star Wars Death Star”, building your own
remote control car, or being the person to have to clean them all up. Either
way, some how, the LEGO Group has impacted many people through out history. LEGO
is perhaps one of the most recognized names in the world, and as it states in
the book, “Brick by Brick,” “with the possible exception of Apple, arguably no
brand sparks as much cultlike devotion as LEGO.” And because one LEGO brick
combined with another and anther has the capability to be turned into cars,
sculptures, calendars, art, hours of being sucked into a new realm, and turning
adults into kids, it is important to look back and understand how the LEGO
Group has successfully done so. It is also important to appreciate how their
way of designing has created this fixation and passion to a plastic brick.
LEGO- Piecing Together the History
Beginning in 1932 Ole Kirk Kristiansen stared up a business in Billund, Denmark,
where he manufactured stepladders, stools, and wooden toys. Between 1932 to 1939 the
name LEGO was adopted into the carpenter’s firms name, LEGO produced the famous
LEGO Duck, the firm had 10 employees and LEGO’s motto was cut out and hung up
for all their workers to see, “Only
the best is good enough”. The LEGO Group has stuck by this motto ever since and
you can see this throughout their work ever since. Godtfred Kirk Christiansen,
who became manager in 1956 “once,
approved a shipment of wooden toys with two rather than the mandated three
coats of varnish, Ole Kirk Kristiansen dispatched him to the train station to
retrieve the ill-made toys and made him stay up all night adding the third
coat.” Kristiansen made sure that LEGO’s work would keep to their motto. This
dedication in design and not faltering has pushed LEGO to be one of the most
successful design firms to this day. In 1946 Ole Kirk Kristiansen was the first
Danish toy makers to purchase an injection molding machine. He revolutionized
the industry of toys buy doing so. Today most plastic toys are now being
injection molded. Ole Kirk Kristiansen was a pioneer in his day and put
dedication into his work. He also, along with his family who still own the firm,
believed in their work. The LEGO Group has shown that you don’t need to always
give up quality and what you believe in to come out on top. By laying down a
foundation first, and building on top of that, you can have tremendous results.
Design is about making your product work, but making sure it will stand the
test of time, making sure it is quality, and making sure you’re doing it to
inspire creativity. As Brian Reed once put it, “Everything is designed. Few
things are designed well.” Although LEGO fell into record losses around the
years 2001 to 2009, LEGO has now started to innovate once again and has
profited over 38% in the last 5 years.
Design Methods & Philosophy
As stated previously, the LEGO Group started out their
philosophy with “Only the best is good enough”. Ole Kirk Kristiansen also “had the critical insight that Lego was not a toy, but
instead a "system of play". This meant that all Lego blocks were
compatible with all other Lego blocks”. The design methods behind LEGO were
simple. Manufacture a quality product and to keep the details of the LEGO brick
design the same. “You can take a LEGO brick built in 1958 and snap it together
with a brick from 2008 as if fifty years had never happened.” LEGO started
loosing insight on this during and around 2001 when they started to forget
about that kids do want to keep building and piecing things together and not
just have another action figure. They came out with a new line, “less buildable and more playable.” This hurt them
immensely. “Think GI Joe instead of bricks. Jack Stone an oversized
minifigure, stepped out in 2001 as LEGO’s new world hero…and failed miserably.
The majority of kids didn’t care about a fabricated character without
history or context. The pieces comprising the toy sets required expensive new
injection molds, making it unprofitable to turn out. But the most egregious
error? It alienated its core fans – adults and parents who grew up with LEGO
bricks – for abandoning its classic play values: “Joy of building, pride of
creation.” LEGO came back by a way of two approaches. They started to
grasp the idea that kids still want to build and create in this new
technological world and that adults still have a strong passion for LEGOs. SO
with these two things in mind, LEGO started in “2009, to
introduced a well-received line of buildable board games, like Lego
Minotaurus.” They also gave in and realized kids grow off of good competition,
which LEGO wasn’t too fond of encouraging competition for a long time. They
have now started to create video games and also an animated film, which will be
airing in 2014. The LEGO Group has gained popularity with adults, and, no, not just
because of their kids. LEGOs have been such a large part of adult’s
childhoods and have also sparked so many memorable moments. The LEGO brick has carried
on and given everyone his or her own way to open up and be creative. They can
design what they want and construct their own personal creations. One example,
of several, is the LEGO Calendar, a
wall-mounted time planner created by Vitamins Design located in London, England. “The Brit designers used green, yellow,
blue, orange and pink blocks to track what projects everyone’s working on in
the studio. At a glance, you can look at the wall and see what everyone’s doing
and what projects are getting the most investment of time on any given day,
week or month. Even better, while it may be made entirely of the tactile toys,
you can take a photo of it with a smart phone, and all of the events become
magically synchronized with an online digital calendar.”, stated by Mary
Schumacher. This just shows that LEGO can keep on improving with new
ideas and that even the business environment is being creative with the LEGO
bricks.
Design
work & visual characteristics
The LEGO Group, for the majority of years it has been up and
running, has had a specific look to it. It is unmistakable to point out a LEGO
product. Ever since 1958 when Ole Kirk Kristiansen patented LEGO’s brick, they
still make it to this day. The visual characteristics are found in the blocky
shapes of their toys and products. They keep to very distinctive colors, like
yellow and red. They first started off with those colors and kept with the
primary colors. Today LEGO carries and has supplied numerous colors of bricks
for everyone to enjoy, but still having their main yellow and red bricks always
in production. They once strayed from their blocky minifigures and tried to
create a taller skinner action hero. They realized soon enough that isn’t what LEGO
is and eventually came back to the loveable blocky characters that everyone
enjoys and remembers. It is hard to stick with an idea and go with it,
especially over 80 years of design. Trying to always keep that form and
function in your design concept is tricky, however, LEGO somehow found a way to
create something that almost has no end to the vast possibilities of what you
can do with the LEGO brick. Today and throughout, the LEGO Groups, history LEGO
has had to design around kids and ability to stir up their imaginations. You
can see this through their genres of sets. In some cases the genres have been
focused on characters from movies, they have been created from ninjas, pirates,
to aliens, to deep-sea adventures. The design teams now have used technology to
help in this, by creating buildable board games and producing LEGO movies. As
previously touched on earlier, now even adults are becoming interested in LEGOs
once more and or for the first time. LEGO has now even come out with the
architecture studio sets, which is geared more towards adults and helping them
in design.
The LEGO Group has been
innovated, creative, smart, and has stuck by their motto, “Only the best is good enough”. LEGO has always been a large part of my life and childhood; I
hope it can be apart of the future generations as well. LEGO has done well,
through design, to help build up peoples imaginations and to care enough to
make a positive impact.
by
Jon Paul White
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