LEGO BrickLink Designer Program Head shares tip for success

The head of the BrickLink Designer Program has shared an important tip to increase your chances of success, and it even requires less design time.

The popularity of the BrickLink Designer Program only continues to grow in popularity, increasing the challenge for budding designers hoping to get their own official LEGO set. Thankfully, Head of the BrickLink Designer Program Alex Kastelic has shared a tip to increase those chances, but you need to think smaller.

"Your part count is always going to be one of the limiting factors when you're designing, so if you're designing a 4,000-part set, you're competing against every other model out there, regardless of theme," said Alex to Brad's Archives. "I will typically say that if you want the best chance, design a 2,500-part model or a 2,200 to 2,800-part model, because you're not moving the needle, that average needle.

"It could technically be up to three of those models selected, or like Series 4, there could be five of those models. We didn't have a small model or a big model in that series; we just had five medium models."

The advice comes down to the popularity of larger builds, such as the 4,000-piece Adventure in Transylvania, The Thieves of Tortuga, Privateer Frigate Fortuna, and Dustmark Keep. Since they're generally popular and highly voted, the BrickLink Designer Program team have to pick a couple of those to appeal to the community, but they still aim to hit an average of 2,500 pieces across the five sets in each series.

So far, they've been successful with that goal, but it means that as much as the community continues to vote for larger projects, they need just as many average-sized builds and ones with low piece counts as well. While there are plenty of submissions of those kinds being proposed for each series, the competition just isn't as fierce as it is in the higher part count categories.

This means that by opting to make a smaller model, and therefore spending less time designing it, you stand a greater chance of being selected, if only to even out the average piece count of that series. Click here for an in-depth look at the finalists selected in every series.

With just over 24 hours left until you can submit for Series 10, this advice is something to be aware of, considering the inevitable rush of larger submissions.

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