If you have a child or have been a child yourself, it is likely that you are familiar with LEGO. Maybe you created cities and empires or perhaps you never got past building a lovely color-coordinated box with some flowers outside the door (my kids should stop looking at me, ahem). Even if you have never been a LEGO enthusiast yourself, you certainly have felt the searing pain of stepping on a LEGO, and if not, I’m not sure you are even alive. The point is that LEGO seems to have touched pretty much everyone’s life at some point. But did you know that Mazama has its very own LEGO set designer?
Mazama resident and Liberty Bell High School graduate Logan Ellis entered into a LEGO contest that was a partnership between The LEGO Group and the LEGO shopping website Bricklink, as well as the general LEGO community. Out of over 400 entries, one of Logan’s designs, The Clovershire Castle, was chosen to be one of the 16 finalists. From this point, the contest is in a crowdfunding stage, where the 16 finalists’ designs have until April 15 to reach the fundraising goal, determined by the number of pre-orders placed. In Logan’s case, she has 135 pre-orders left to go before the end of the fundraising period. If by the end of the period she makes it to the goal, her set idea will be realized as an actual set that people worldwide will be able to buy for a limited period.
Logan first became a LEGO fanatic back when she was 4 or 5, as many kids do. But when she was in high school, she took her interest to the next level and began designing sets herself, both physically and digitally. She uses Stud.io software, which is a free LEGO design software distributed by the Bricklink website. This is the first time that she has entered a contest where the end result is a manufactured set, and she submitted seven entries to this particular contest.
If this design makes it past the crowdfunding and pre-order placement phase to be made as an actual set, Logan hopes it will be an inspiration to other LEGO designers and fans of LEGO. She says that it would be amazing to hold a physical set and to be able to tell people that she designed it, and that it was produced by the company with very little alteration to her original design. She hopes it would inspire others to submit models of their own to LEGO platforms such as the website LEGO Ideas, or any future contests like this, where their designs can be realized as official LEGO sets as well.
When Logan is not designing LEGO models, you can find her working at the Mazama Store or ice skating at the Winthrop Rink. She recently graduated from the University of Idaho and is writing a novel. She also enjoys singing, performing and composing music.
If you would like to support Logan by pre-ordering her LEGO design, please go to www.bricklink.com/v3/crowdfunding/designer-sets-for-adult-fans-of-lego/57599/Clovershire-Castle.
It takes less than five minutes to register and preorder and is easy to do. I hope to have a Cloverfield Castle model in my hands to give to my niece for her birthday. Who knows? Maybe it will inspire her to begin designing LEGO models like Logan does.
