LEGO is communication: other

Welcome to the almost final post in the series where we’re looking at LEGO models from a communicational point of view. Start at the introduction and read all of the other posts. It’s fun stuff.

This is going to sound crude to most of you. It’s true though. If you’ve followed this series from the beginning you know that even if you do it consciously or not, your MOCs function like I say they do. They are messages directed towards an audience, designed and presented in a way that either strengthen or weaken the intended impact. That’s all there is to it.

If you always structure your building like I imply you should in this series, you achieve three things:

  1. Good MOCs
  2. Boredom
  3. In the words of Keith Goldman: Boilerplate

“So wait a minute. You tell us to think about things a certain way, and now you’re saying we shouldn’t do that? What gives?”

I said that I was going to teach you how to build great models. And that’s what I’ve done. I’ve put into words and structured up what you probably already sensed, but maybe couldn’t specify. But now that you got this basic knowledge, it’s easier to think about your building and evolve it further.

And that’s what’s really going to make you a better builder.

This is the last “true” part of this series of posts, since the next one will just be a summary of the discussions we’ve had. This post is short, but important. It’s essentially a big disclaimer.

Remember that reasoning on aspects like this series of posts does will get you on your way. But like good things in general you can’t exactly pinpoint what it is that make good LEGO models good. I personally believe it’s magic.

Magic is hard to create, but once you do – man. The feeling is indescribable, just like the results. Magic doesn’t happen when you stick to the conventional middle ground. You have to venture beyond for that, go where others haven’t, try the things others wouldn’t dare to. It increases your odds of failure, but also your odds of success.

LEGO is a creative medium. Structure your thoughts, but be creative.

And that’s the end of this short but important post.

4 comments on “LEGO is communication: other”

  1. Pingback: Lego is communication | The Brothers Brick | LEGO Blog

  3. Alan R

    Hey,

    I’d just like to thank you for this series, and this blog in general.

    From when I was around 5 until about 2 years ago (when I was 14) I played with LEGO non-stop, but then for whatever reason, I fell out of love with it, and took a long hiatus. However, thanks to (for a large part) this blog, I recently restarted my building, and am really happy to have done so (especially with 3 months of summer looming ahead).

    I just recently finished an approximately to scale LCVP (WWII Landing craft, think D-Day), in a large part due to this series’ ideas of “message/ audience/ build”

    As my audience is mainly me (but showing off to my friends b/c i’m proud of my work), I dunno if I’ll set up a flickr acct / MOCPages acct and share it with the world, but that’s not the point. Thanks in a large part to this blog, and especially this series, I went from vaguely thinking about LEGO once-a-month to actually getting back into the thick of it, and I’m really happy to have done so.

    Thanks

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