For my STCM212000: Experience Design class we begin with an exercise in virtual product design, specifically a Lego set for a student-selected client. This is a 200 level course and the core idea I want to express is separating the idea of "selling a physical product" from "selling an experience".
Lego sells individual bricks directly, anyone can download a list of parts for a set, order those parts individually for less, and then download the plans online. When you buy a Lego set you are buying a pre-planned experience. Almost nobody wants sets to come pre-assembled.
From theme parks to video games to the toy aisle, Lego has succeeded by paying attention to experience design in many forms.
While we start on paper, as the project progresses my students learn 3D production basics by beginning with Lego Studio to design, then move that work into a real 3D production pipeline. This requires understanding the intricacies of file translation and multi-file environments, something many first and second year college students have not experienced.
The students' job is to design the set for a client that represents their professional interests, then render the set for the box art and in a real world space. I made the box art for them totally riffing on Lego's designs. (This is an area where fair use actually applies!) I personally re-created high resolution fakes of real Lego boxes, as seen here. The box art I drew from is at the bottom. I first used Photoshop over 30 years ago, doing these was a good refresher for my skills, and I really enjoyed using the new tools. Asking students to re-create the box art would add additional layers of complexity and time to the project, so they learn how to drop their renders into these templates and edit the text. (having to have fonts installed, etc)
Above is the most common choice, Lego Ideas is Lego's own fan submission portal, and in this case my department had a student hired as communications director of Museum of the Earth, thus the choice. All copyrights held by their original owners, these images were made in support of a classroom exercise.
The final option was the classic Lego box art from my own childhood, a real joy to re-create myself decades later. This was fascinating for me to do, Lego uses Helvetica with some very interesting kerning, making the types of gradients seen withing Photoshop was also a fun challenge. The only thing seen my box art re-creations that is copy and pasted from Lego is the logo itself.
Below are the original pieces of box art I used for templates, Credit to the Lego Corporation and related copyright holders. All of this work was done for a college course at a non-profit institution.
