LEGO designer builds a career
Some people land jobs that children dream of, and Wesley Talbott is one of those them.
As a model designer for LEGO, Talbott helps make what you find in a LEGO box, working on everything from the selection of the colors and the pieces, or “bricks” in LEGO-speak, to the way they function and move.
Talbott has worked on a variety of LEGO product lines, called “play themes” by the company, designing everything from LEGO Disney to the LEGO movies and taking ideas from conception to production.
USA TODAY caught up with Talbott to talk about everything from childhood dreams to building design knowledge and being an innovative thinker.
Q: What does your career path look like, from college to now?
Talbott: I got back into LEGOs when I was in college. I played with it as a kid, and in college the “Lord of the Rings” sets came out. I was a huge fan of “Lord of the Rings” and a huge fan of LEGO, and ended up owning all of them and it sparked that joy I had as a kid.
As a kid I always wanted to work for LEGO. I had kind of forgotten that because I was pursuing a career as an illustrator. Then I thought maybe I could do illustration for LEGO. I found someone who had done illustration work for LEGO magazines, and they shared some of their contacts with me.
I sent three different emails with my portfolio, which was catered to LEGO. I got a bite on one of them that needed a concept artist essentially for a new play theme they were working on, and they liked my portfolio. I had to get permission from my professors to skip classes for about a week to go to Billund, Denmark (where LEGO headquarters is located), and do this quick contract doing some concept work. I finished up that contract, then I got another one working on the same project, so I went twice. On the second one, I really felt like I really liked the company, I really liked the people, and I liked the work. But what I thought was funny was that I enjoyed building so much at that point that I wanted to apply for a model building position, and I was just really, really lucky in that another model building position came up shortly after that. I applied, and because they had already worked with me twice and they all knew me really well, I got it.
I started on the Elves play theme, which is why I got the job because it was a fantasy-based theme and that’s what I was really interested in illustrating. I worked on that for about four or five years, and then after that I moved on to LEGO Friends, LEGO Ideas and “LEGO Movie 2” (where he designed some of the models), kind of all simultaneously. That’s where I am today.
Q: What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on?
Talbott: I really enjoyed working on the pop-up book (a fully functioning pop-up book built entirely out of LEGO pieces) for LEGO Ideas. It kind of links in with how I got to LEGO, and I also just really enjoyed getting to work with some passionate fans on this project. I really like how it’s so different from anything we offer. We always make these playsets and things, and they’re done this certain way or they’re these big display models geared more toward adults, but this is really stretching what LEGO can do and that’s what I am intrigued by the most.
Q: What does a typical day look like for you?
Talbott: I roll into work around 8:30, get coffee and sit down at my desk. I’ve got two ways of working: digital and physical. Physical is with actual bricks. We have work tables set up with shelving units full of all of the main bricks that we need.
Model building starts with an initial idea, for instance, a dragon. Lots of kids would love to play with their own toy dragon, so it’s up to me, starting with a pile of LEGO bricks to consider things like how to make the shape appealing and dragon-like, what exciting magical colors the dragon should be, where and how the limbs of the dragons can be posed into different positions for more animated play, and stability so that the model stays together during play without losing the ability to be taken apart and built into something else if the child chooses to.
There are a lot of communal building areas where all of the model designers are working, so it’s a nice environment where you can talk to other people. Once we’ve done our first pass at a physical version of the model, we go back to our desks and build the same model in the animation software Maya. That allows us to price everything and keep track of all the details about it.
I also attend meetings on the quality of the bricks, making sure that we stick to our high standards.
There’ll be questions like maybe an element is breaking and we need to add some reinforcement so it’ll stop breaking.
Q: What has been your biggest career high and your biggest career low?
Talbott: High: I worked a tiny bit on the LEGO Batman movie. I did one model, but it was pretty cool because it ended up in the movie, so I have my name in the credits. That was a big deal to have my name in the credits of a major movie. That’ll happen again with the LEGO Movie 2, so that’s pretty exciting. Low: Often my projects have a life span of many years and after that they have to get cut so something fresher and newer can come in. It’s the natural innovation and development cycle in any company, which brings a natural tension in the highs and lows. That’s always hard, when you’ve been putting your soul into something for a long time and then it’s over, so you’re lost for a bit.
Q: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned so far?
Talbott: Surprisingly enough, just getting to know people better. Being a freelancer before, I mostly worked alone. Working at LEGO especially, where there’s a lot of different nationalities and a lot of different worldviews, you really get a wide breadth of humanity. There’s struggles that come with that, and there’s clashing viewpoints, and there’s similarities, and it’s pretty amazing to be able to be in that situation and learn more about what makes people tick and how to conduct yourself.
Q: What advice would you give someone who wants to be a LEGO designer?
Talbott: A design degree didn’t hurt – I have a bachelor’s in illustration. Any design background, with basic knowledge of shape and color and composition would definitely be helpful when you’re going into a design field.
That being said, it’s not 100% necessary – there are a lot of people that come from engineering backgrounds or even lawyers or doctors or other positions where they managed to get a job as a designer purely from their passion for building with LEGO.
About the series
Our series “How I became a …” digs into the stories of accomplished and influential people, finding out how they got to where they are in their careers.