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Q&A – Samuel Tacchi
Designer, LEGO® Technic™
What’s
it like to be a designer at the LEGO Group?
I started working for the
LEGO Group in 2016. I will always remember my first day, stepping into the
office and looking at all the future products on the shelves. There were LEGO® bricks everywhere that the designers use to help come up with new
models. I felt like a kid in a candy store.
I love working as a LEGO® Technic™ designer because it provides a different challenge every day. We try to recreate iconic vehicles on a small scale so designing the sets requires a good amount of problem solving as well as creativity. As designers, we are encouraged to spend the first few months at the LEGO Group just getting used to using the LEGO brick and building in different ways with it. It teaches you a huge amount about what is possible with the LEGO system of play.
Once I’d got used to the design basics, the first project I worked on was the LEGO® Technic™ WHACK Racing Car following by the LEGO® Technic™ BASH Racing Car, both of which had pull-back motors. It was great to have my first experience designing very small, but complex models. They taught me a huge amount!
I’ve been working at the LEGO Group for four years now and I’ve developed more than five models. Each new model I design is a step up in complexity from the last so I always look forward to my next challenge, and that’s the reason why I love my job so much.
How
did the process start for the LEGO® Technic™ App-controlled Top
Gear Rally Car?
I’m a huge Top Gear
fan so I was really excited to get going. We knew exactly what we wanted the
car to look like from the beginning, which made it easy for me to jump straight
into the design process.
As the LEGO® Technic™ Top Gear Rally Car is app-controlled, our first task was to understand how we could use the technology to bring the car to life. I build a test car that used all the components in a very compact way so we could ensure the technology would power the car well. Once we had achieved this, we started to design the final shape of the car.
We presented the first design concept to the Top Gear team and everyone was excited, which was a good sign that we were on the right track. We then worked with the Top Gear team to make some refinements to the model to ensure it was the perfect Rally Car for the Stig!
What
was your favourite part of the design process?
I enjoyed every
minute of the design process. I am a huge Top Gear fan so it really was a dream
to get to design a rally car for the Stig.
What
was your inspiration for the model?
I am a petrol head! My head is full of information about cars, design,
style, racing and performance and I look at new trends on a daily basis. For
the LEGO® Technic™ App-controlled Top Gear Rally Car I
also spent a good amount of time looking at Rally Cross and the World Rally
Championship and the cars that fans loved from these racing series!
Can you tell me how you worked with the graphic
designer on the LEGO® Technic™ App-controlled Top
Gear Rally Car?
While I design the car
and determine which LEGO® elements to use, I work alongside a graphic
designer to who starts to think about the details that makes the model come to
life. The graphic designer thinks about how we can add cool features and
details to the cars using stickers like you see on lots of real-life rally
cars. Together, we researched current design trends in the rally car world to
determine what kind of colours the car should be and what graphics we should
use on the outside. The main focus was to make Top Gear Rally Car look as fast,
adventurous and powerful, just like the sort of car the Stig would like to
drive!
How
did you choose the colours?
Picking the colours was quite difficult, because we had lots of
different colour schemes in our heads that would have all been great. Of course
we wanted the car to stand out to rally and Top Gear fans, but we looked across
the LEGO® Technic™ range to
ensure we chose colours that made this model really unique. It wasn’t easy, but
we’ve had really good feedback from fans on the colours so I’m sure we made the
right decision!
What
role did stickers play?
The stickers on the LEGO® Technic™ App-controlled Top
Gear Rally Car add an important layer to make the design feel really
authentic. You rarely see a rally car without sponsors or race numbers so we
needed some cool stickers for this model.
I designed the model without stickers at first to make sure we had the right shape before adding different colours or stickers. Once I knew we had a good shape, the stickers added the final touch to the car by adding an extra level of excitement to the model.
What
is the coolest feature of the car?
I think the rear spoiler is the coolest feature of the LEGO® Technic™ App-controlled Top Gear Rally Car. We used a
wheel arch to build the big red spoiler which felt crazy when we were
experimenting with it, but it really works and makes the spoiler different to
others used in the LEGO® Technic™ range!
How did you choose what sort of car to design
for BBC Top Gear?
It’s a dream come true to
design a LEGO model for one of my favourite TV series. I had the chance
to meet the Top Gear team and work with them to design the sort of car we
thought the Stig would be proud to drive. It was an amazing experience! And on top of that, I got to
meet the Stig himself – how cool is that?
The Stig has obviously driven thousands of cars on Top Gear which made it tough to figure out what sort of model we wanted to create, but the Stig is adventurous and daring so we decided a rally car would be the best fit. Then we had to decide whether to make a replica of an existing car or design a completely new car specifically for this model.
At the LEGO Group, creativity is at the heart of everything we do, so it was natural that the rest of the team and I wanted to use our imaginations to create a totally new car rather than designing a replica. It meant we had more freedom in the design process, but at the same time it posed new challenges as we didn’t have a final shape or design in mind for the finished product.
How does
the app work for the LEGO® Technic™ App-controlled Top Gear Rally Car?
For this model it was
really important that people could try out rally car stunts for themselves, and
the app does exactly
that. You can download the LEGO® Technic™CONTROL+ App from either the
Apple App Store or Android Store and connect to the LEGO® Technic™ App-controlled
Top Gear Rally Car to really enhance the experience of the car. Once the model
is built and the app is connected, you can to try out cool moves and maneuvers
by controlling the car and making it drive forward, reverse, steer, accelerate,
brake and tackle obstacles. The app also adds an additional layer to the rally
car driving experience with authentic sound effects and data feedback.
Do you have any advice for people who aspire to become a LEGO designer?
If you are sitting out there dreaming about becoming a designer for the
LEGO Group, my advice would be to keep on building! As designers, we have to be
curious and creative every day so thinking outside the box, building,
rebuilding and exploring what is possible with the brick is a great way to
develop the sort of skills we appreciate at the LEGO Group.
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