katy lindemann // seemingly unconnected

[ photo (c) LEGO ]

LEGO just get it. And keep doing fantastic stuff to show how much they really do get it.

They recently launched a really natty free iPhone app, LEGO Photo (iTunes link), to Lego-fy your pictures [check out the Flickr group celebrating the awesome stuff you can do with it]

And now they’ve just launched the LEGO CL!CK community, a “collaborative environment designed for inventors, artists and creative enthusiasts to share their vision about new products and toys” – a virtual canvas of shared ideas and quirky stories intended to inspire and delight.

It’s got the usual social boxes ticked, so it’s got Facebook & Twitter functionality, and selected posts with the #legoclick hashtag will appear on the website, and users can offer feedback or submit their own ideas. But the overall idea is to get creative minds talking and sharing ideas about how to use LEGO for play and innovation, which can’t be a bad thing in my book. Unfortunately the actual execution lets it down, in that the site isn’t particularly easy to navigate, which is a real shame – but their heart’s in the right place.

What I love about LEGO is how they’re so comfortable in both the physical and virtual worlds – as demonstrated through their video games, the forthcoming LEGO Universe MMOG – or indeed bridging the two, through such initiatives as LEGO DesignByMe or LEGO Mindstorms.

Because actually, LEGO aren’t a company who sell plastic bricks – they’re a company who sell play and tools to spark your imagination. They seem to get the difference – unlike the likes of Polaroid who didn’t realise they were in the ‘telling stories through pictures’ business, rather than ‘manufacturing film & cameras’ business until it was too late.

And if all that lovely LEGO goodness wasn’t enough for LEGO geeks like me, they’ve created a delightful little film to celebrate the eureka moment when great ideas are generated – what they call a ‘Click moment’. Lovely stuff.