Q&A: Craig Callum, LEGO Design Manager

Craig Callum (from his Instagram)

Who doesn’t love LEGO? That’s a trick question of course – the only people who aren’t fond of the famous brick-building sets are those who have just stepped on an errant 4x2 in the dead of night. Vehicles have been such a key part of the Danish company’s product range for so long that they are now the most prolific producers of tyres in the world, and their ongoing Speed Champions range only adds to all this.

However, what really caught our collective eye about the new McLaren 720S kit is that it includes a designer figurine, complete with all the tools of the trade (minus clay model, as explained below). We contacted LEGO’s suitably enthusiastic design director, Craig Callum, to find out more about the thinking behind his work.

This is his business card. No, really

How did you get into automotive design, and what made you move from full-size cars to LEGO?

I was five years old when I decided I wanted to be a car designer. I was drawing cars all the time (albeit they were a bit crazy, with helipads, swimming pools – more like ocean cruise liners for the road – or it was supercars with attachments of which Dick Dastardly would be proud). When I wasn’t drawing I was playing with my LEGO bricks. It didn’t take long to combine these two activities – something I have repeated in the last few years!

Anyway, when I visited the Motor Show at Birmingham NEC aged 12, Coventry University had some sort of exhibition of their students’ work. I don’t remember anything else from that day out, only that I came back with a more precise plan: study Automotive Design at Coventry University and become a car designer. Apart from a small hiccup when I wanted to be an Archaeologist (thanks to Jurassic Park – once I realised I wouldn’t get to meet real dinosaurs I soon switched again), it was the focus of all my school work and studies.

Moving to LEGO was something I didn’t have to think about twice. I had spent some time freelancing for LEGO on the Mindstorms range and met a few of the team and it’s such a fun place, everyone was so friendly. I jumped at the chance. I worked on a few projects before I finally got the opportunity to propose what is now Speed Champions, going full-circle back to designing cars with LEGO bricks again!

It was quite a change from the automotive world, a much more collaborative approach to design than the competitive one I was used to. It was a welcome change and I soon settled into the all-hands approach. Often a design will change hands a number of times with input from many different designers… I hadn’t experienced that before in the automotive world, although it seems it’s changing these days.

How many people within LEGO work on creating your adaptation of an OEM vehicle?

My design team consists of two model builders, a graphic designer and myself. We all work on the first concept models and sometimes we will collaborate with other design teams – there’s a lot of car fans at LEGO constantly building models of various vehicles, so it’s always useful to reach out and get input from these people!

There’s actually a fair few automotive designers here at LEGO, from RCA, Coventry and such. A designer will be assigned a vehicle but even then we still work closely across the team. Each LEGO designer has different styles and skills, so often when a particular area of a car is just not coming together, another designer will approach it in a completely new way and suddenly the car is even better than before.

We understand that you and your team trial ideas directly in LEGO, rather than sketching or 3D modelling. How do interlocking plastic bricks compare as a design medium to the more commonplace methods?

It might sound strange, but it really does still feel the same. Thinking about curves and surfaces with a limited palette may not be identical, but the thought processing is really similar. I think as an automotive designer, you are trained to solve problems with a set of limitations and you adjust your palette and mindset, to best solve the problem and present a solution.

I almost consider the LEGO bricks as a brand identity that we have to design within, so to a certain degree we probably could replicate cars that are closer to original – for example, by removing the studs from the surfaces – but the LEGO brick is as important to the model as the vehicle we are building. It’s what makes it unique, it’s what makes it a LEGO model.

One of the best things about designing with bricks is that from the first prototype we can see precisely what the final product will look like. Every brick we use is the exact same brick that will come in the box. Any new elements we may produce for a set can be 3D-printed and built into our design pretty much immediately, but with Speed Champions we made a decision to use only generic and universal LEGO bricks; there are no specific elements for a particular car.

What made you want to include a designer figure for this set in particular?

The McLaren 720S is part of our third wave of products and I really wanted to dig deeper into the automotive world. Speed Champions focuses on racing and supercars but the racetrack is only a small part of that story. We have visited the pits, the podium, we have cones and race corners… but how do we get to all of those places? Design!

Design is a part of the process which is becoming increasingly recognised, and I wanted to show that. So we decided we would show more about the development of a vehicle. We have the designer with his desk and a real sketch from the team at McLaren, plus a small model and the final car. At some point we had a mini clay studio with a quarter-scale buck and tools, but it was a bit niche and when we asked kids they just thought it was some brown golf cart for the designer to get around on…

Which brings me back to the kids; they’re the focus of the set, so we focus on details that will inspire them to play out fun stories, to get them excited. Having a cool drawing of a McLaren next to the LEGO model seemed like something kids would love and hopefully will show them, in some simplified way, part of the process of bringing a car to the race track.

Are the designer and his desk based on anyone in particular? Yourself, or someone at McLaren?

Any likeness is purely coincidental… ;) But seriously, the Minifigure included in all the Speed Champions sets is essentially the key to the car. It’s the kid’s connection to the story; they become the Minifigure and play out the story for themselves.

Is that coffee cup to scale? Where can we get full-size mugs like that?

You actually can. We loved the idea of putting the mug at the desk, it’s such an essential part of design… and we heard that the teams at McLaren weren’t allowed to have coffee cups at their desks, so we decided to tease them! Although I have heard there are a few who flout the rules, but I wouldn’t want to name names…