Back in November, LEGO opened a design contest both to celebrate the first decade of their fan design-to-official set support platform LEGO Ideas, but also to spruce up the design for their logo. Interested participants needed only to submit their artistic creations in LEGO bricks, other materials or digital CGI.
Winners of the contest would receive some of the famous sets to be released under the LEGO Ideas program, with the Grand Prize contestant having his design be adopted as the new official logo. The deadline for entries passed on December last year, and last Friday, the winners were announced.
From LEGO’s last count, a total of over 600 entries were sent to the Build Your Own LEGO Ideas Logo before the December deadline. The Grand Prize Winner was a contestant known as L87R85, whose design, Switch on the Ideas, shows a light-bulb, wire and plug rendered in CGI bricks.
The LEGO Group hasn’t quite made clear yet when this new logo will be used for LEGO Ideas, whether on website or as labeling on future sets. What is known, however, is that while only the Grand Prize entry becomes the official logo, LEGO will also use the runner-up entries.
As LEGO celebrates the 10th year of what originally began as LEGO Cuusoo, the non-Grand Prize winning designs will also be utilized in the event for tribute. These contestants also received two NASA-themed LEGO Ideas sets while L87R85 won six; check more details in our last article about the contest.
See the other runner-up designs in the official LEGO Ideas website, along with judges’ commentary on the logos including L87R85’s Grand Prize winner. And here’s an advance greeting to LEGO Ideas for another ten years or more of helping fans crowd-fund great build designs into future best-selling official LEGO sets.
A large company would usually pay a designer upwards of $50k++ for a company logo. LEGO gets their fans to design one and offers a few sets that would cost them less than $100 to produce as compensation to the “winner”. Hmmm.
I think they’re probably doing it less for the physical prizes and more for the recognition they’ll get for being the person who designed a logo for LEGO. They probably got at least a few job offers/clients because of it. Not a bad deal, I’d say.