The Challenge
Creative play is currently under threat. With the rise of digital gaming and social media, children's creativity is dwindling as they claim they haven't got time to play, as children have started to move from bricks to clicks. With the possibility of raising a generation of children who are less creative, imaginative and happy and parents are replacing creative play with academia.
Create an a new offering from Lego to reinstall Lego's brand value of creativity and imagination, create a powerful idea to put creative play back on the agenda, and make it a 'need to have' instead of a 'nice to have'. To ultimately inspire the future generation of builders.
The Solution
Introducing the 'Buildable Book', an exciting new brand offering that bridges the gap between learning and creative play, within both analogue and digital platforms.
The buildable book was created to promote academic learning through creative play and champion original thinking by doing away with the traditional Lego instruction book that comes with practically every Lego set which leads to only one outcome. This new offering from Lego was designed to reinstall Lego's core brand offering of creativity in the mind of consumers and to show the benefits of creative play by ultimately demonstrating that academic learning through creative play is possible and that you don't have to choose between the two.
As the buildable book comes with no instruction book, there is no set outcome for what is meant to be created. This means that this new product offering is compatible with any existing collection of Lego's children already own. In addition, as every child will have different amounts and different types of Lego bricks, every outcome from every child will be different. As a result, this will ultimately create outcomes that are more personal and meaningful to the builders.
A Unique Book Series
Each book will contain three different stories, represented by the three different mini-figures that come as standard on the front of the book. These mini-figures will also act as narrators of the stories, guiding the builders as to what the builders should be building...with the difference being, not telling the children how to build. Instead, tapping into their imaginations and intuition to inspire original, new and exciting builds and creations.
Each volume comes with three different story genres to make sure that there is a story to interest everyone. As well as creating a wide variety of different stories which can prompt a large number of different builds from story to story.
The very buildable book cover is meant to be taken off and used as a platform for children to build of off. By making the actual physical book part of the building experience is a USP which can drive consumer interest and engagement without even opening it.
Becoming Story Builders
Children can use Lego to build characters and whatever story elements that are mentioned throughout the book as they read, from gravity defying cars and interstellar rocket-ships, through to hideous monsters and magical castles. The in-text descriptions and physical adjectives are limited, i.e. ‘the creature’ would be used instead of ‘the tall, thin, three-headed monster’, so to encourage free-flowing imagination and therefore instinctive creative building; allow for unpredictable unique builds from every child.
Bringing Stories to Life
The children's builds can be brought to life using the AR feature on the integrated buildable book application for smart phones, iPads and tablets. This additional option allows stories to literally jump out of the page, and allow children to see the builds that they've made take up a life of their own.This allows builds to exist with builds from different pages, and also in-situ with a number of different set animated and motion graphic backgrounds.
Children's builds in response from the book can be scanned with the buildable book application and then saved, stored and shared on the 'Lego Life' application. This encourages creative destruction, so children can feel comfortable deconstructing the builds they're proud of and re-use bricks from previous builds for future builds from future stories. On Lego life young creatives can show off their inspirational unique builds and interact with one another, in a safe and productive online environment. This further promotes original thinking and social and well as individual building.
Building the New
Window displays will be constructed in windows of bookshops all over the country showcasing children's magnificent original Lego builds in response to different stories. Lego will host workshops in schools, hospitals and youth-clubs nation wide where they will set these children the task of building their interpretations of the text from one page of a story, and then showcasing their builds in book shop windows, showing the diverse imagination of children, and how what ever they can imagine, will always e better than building following instructions to reach one set outcome.
The only limit to what they can build, is their imagination.
The Creative Team
The creative team for this project consisted of:
Thomas Hardwick, Katherine Poole, Ryan Turner and Sara Torras Cañero.