After a largely successful pilot, the Bricklink team has some exciting news – the Bricklink Designer Program will make a return in 2023 and become a permanent program, with a few tweaks to the formula.
Fans of the Bricklink Designer Program will be delighted to learn that the first round, which will span 2023 and 2024 will be titled “Series 1”, which the Bricklink team describes as a maturation from the one-off 2021 invitational program, into a sustainable, ongoing platform that can be sustained over time.
For a refresher, the BrickLink Designer Program is a program organised by Bricklink, allowing fans to be the fan designer of their own sets, and fans to to crowdfund and pledge money towards those sets, which are typically designs that exist outside of LEGO’s own portfolio.
There will be tweaks to the formula, with the biggest one being all submissions must be made in BrickLink Studio, and they must use elements from a specific pool of Bricklink Designer Program palette of elements.
Useful links:
- Learn more on the Bricklink site!
- Submission Guidelines
- Download Bricklink Studio
Aspiring fan designers will also have to follow Submission Guidelines, where there are requirements that cover theme, size, part selection, part usage, stability, submodels, building experience, working models, stressing the elements, Minifigures, and stickers.
Another consideration is that submissions should contain digital instructions, and unlike the previous rounds, there will be less hands on contact with LEGO’s Model Governance team.
Important note: for the Bricklink Designer Program Series 1 sets, there won’t be physical instruction made available, and only digital instructions will be available, which is slightly disappointing.
Oh, and the fun part, successful fan designers will receive royalties of 5% from the net price of each set sold.
In each series, there will be 5 sets approved for crowdfunding, and any one of those 5 sets that reach a crowdfunding threshold of 3,000 sets will eventually be produced. Taking feedback onboard from the very limited availability from the invitational (only 10,000 of each set was made available), up to 20,000 of each successfully crowdfunded set will be produced in this new iteration of the program.
Oh, and there’ll be a limit of 2 copies of each set per household that can be pre-ordered.
There’s a catch as the sets won’t be available globally – only countries with their own LEGO.com Online Store will be able to crowdfund and order these sets. See below for a complete list of eligible countries.
How Series 1 will work
Series 1 will span 2023 and early 2024, with these milestones:
- Create Your Designs: December 9, 2022—February 2023
We invite all LEGO enthusiasts 18 and older to design your models in Studio. - Open Submission: February 1—28, 2023
Submit your models during a 4-week window to be considered before the deadline on February 28, 2023 at noon Pacific US time. - Crowd Validation: March 7—March 31
We invite all BrickLink members to vote for their favorite submissions. This crowd vote weighs in alongside the BDP’s internal selection criteria and influences the designs chosen for crowdfunding. - Review: April—May 2023
Our team checks every design for building experience, brand fit, and crowd favorites. - 5 Designs Announced: Late May 2023
We’ll reveal the five Series 1 designs. Then we’ll collaborate with fan designers to prepare them for production. - Crowdfunding: February 2024
BrickLink members will be invited to pre-order their favorite designs, with a limit of 2 of each set per household. All designs that receive over 3,000 pre-orders will be produced. We will manufacture up to 20,000 of each set on a limited production run. - Production and Shipping: Summer/Fall 2024
We produce the sets in the factory. Orders will be ready to ship approximately 6 months after crowdfunding. Actual dates and shipping times may vary.
Important Information about BDP Series 1
- BDP Series 1 is accepting submissions between February 1 and February 28, 2023.
- All submissions must follow the Submission Guidelines and use only parts from the BDP Series 1 Palette.
- All are welcome to join our live webinar on December 14th at 8am Pacific / 5pm CET to learn about the Submission Guidelines. Can’t join live? We’ll make a video available after the session. You must register to attend at https://bit.ly/BDPS1-Webinar.
Only BrickLink members from the following 31 countries are allowed to pre-order the designer sets.
America: USA, Canada, Mexico
Europe: UK, Germany, Belgium, Italy, France, Spain, Denmark, Poland, Sweden, Netherlands, Norway, Hungary, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia, Ireland, Slovakia, Czechia, Luxembourg, Latvia, Estonia, Greece.
Asia/Oceania: South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand
Check out some previous successful designs from the Bricklink Designer Program Invitational! Round 3 of course hasn’t shipped out yet.
Round 3
Round 2
Overall, I’m glad the Bricklink Designer Program is making a return, as we’ve had some really amazing sets and designs come out of here, but it seems like there’s much less of a hands on “LEGO” involvement here, with the Submission Guidelines being created to dictate and govern the set design process.
I don’t know what that will mean for the building experience, stability and quality but it’s possible that the LEGO X-Factor won’t be there.
It also seems like with LEGO being less hands on, we finally get an understanding of how this (and Bricklink) has evolved, and this is ultimately shaping up to be a competitor to services like Rebrickable and other fan-design Instruction sites.
Ultimately, the success of Series 1 like the Invitational Program will largely depend on the quality and calibre of fan submissions. These not being tied to rejected LEGO Ideas submissions I think can be a positive, as we might see some wild and creative submissions that we haven’t seen before.
What do you think of the new Bricklink Designer Program? Let me know in the comments!
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It is not an idea from BrickLink there are People they do not have a tablet or smartphone at a lot place of the world or a good internet or no internet and they have a building box and they cannot build it think twice creators not only at your pocket and at the other people’s and kids as well
“there will be less hands on contact with LEGO’s Model Governance team.”
Less? LESS? You brought this up in your post and I agree, I fear for the building stability and experience. Building the one set I got and hearing horror stories about the Fishing Boat didn’t make me confident in fan designers when it comes to a strong build.
It will be exciting to see how this goes. I would still prefer it if there were no pre-order limit and the sets were instead made to order. I would also like to see a rolling approach: e.g. each month a new set is announced, one set gets approved, the next round of votes goes up, and so on. Nonetheless, I’m glad to see the program continue.
Bricklink need to improve the digital instructions though. The colours did not match the pieces used.
Very curious to see how this goes. I got eight of the sets from the first Designer Program (though four of them have yet to be shipped), and they were all absolutely worth it. Even the Fishing Boat, which was a pain to build but looks great (and the price was right).
Have put together only the Venetian Houses but this was first-rate!!!