Lego Website - Design Study and History - ✁ ∙ Web Crafting

LeGo WeBsItE

Notabot made the interesting observation in the shoutbox that the Lego website covers almost the complete history of web design, I though it would be useful to screenshot every major design change that happened on the site and have a discussion about it!

1996-1997 - Archive Link
"This is Home" The earliest design of the site is from 1996, only two years after the launch of the World Wide Web. I particularly enjoy the random photo album with pictures of Russia taken by a lego employee on a trip! This site still really is designed around the idea of web-pages; it has links that go to pages and there's very little abstraction surrounding those pages. Its also worth pointing out that the website Club is present here! It remains present in different forms for the whole history of the site. I also love that they speak to kids directly as if they were functional human beings, that's respectful and I would have appreciated it as a kid. "You are simply a VIP, our most important person [] we made this site for you".

1998-1999 (not saved properly) - Archive Link
Unfortunately I cant find any complete archive of this era of the site (if anyone can find an image post it please!) - However we can see that it's in the "random objects arranged in a vague galaxy" style of sites, slimier to the classic Space Jam site; the key shift is that we have moved from links-to-pages into portals-to-zones; that's one of the first big mental shifts that happens in 90s web design - the link become represented as worlds. Girls get their own world and Boys get all the other worlds (as is appropriate for 1998). The navbar is on the right hand side (unusual) and a topbar has not yet been invented; we also see an explicitly defined parents link, that's the first defined grown ups space on the site.

2000-2001 - Archive Link
(Note this is the low-res non-Flash version of the site, the Flash one was not fully archived) This is a fun and kinda unique moment; you can see its probably an evolution of the 1998 design, but with more early neo-pets like polish. The main page is primarily a series of portals leading to different zones; we also have a topbar for the first time (every site after this will have a top bar) - This might also be the first site to have Flash media. I think this is a very cohesive design and its a shame it was so short lived. It also feels like a piece of lego box art and that's a nice crossover.

2002 - Archive Link
This is a weird one! The design only lasts a year; It very much fits into the "cool pixel art" style of site that was popular in 2001-2002 (I think Habbo Hotel is almost the last relic of that era alive today). I personally find this site kind of boring, but it does capture a key moment when we start seeing content that's enclosed in layouts and borders - before that things just sort of floated there on the page. I think they did a really nice job of spacing out the links around the layout, almost everywhere as something interesting to click. This was cool direction though, it was very short lived, but you can see its DNA in later sites. I tried to see if I could find the designers name but I could not!

2003 - Archive Link
Arguably this is the first modern style layer-cake site; where the footer, topbar and center content are all clearly split. Its still not designed for widescreens yet (its all stuck on one side). However with a bit of tweaking you could maybe pass this off as a modern site. It also has gloss effects that would not become popular until around 2007 with the iOS design language.

2004 - Archive Link
This year saw a minor edit to the 2003 site, its a little more polished and a little more playful; in a lot of ways its actually a bit more retro (its got more depth and ornamentation). Its important to remember that 2004 was a very grey era for the web; there were a lot of dull tones used on sites back then (Look up 2004 DeviantArt), and this sits in that context. Overall this era is bland and I don't think they designers did a very good job, technology was limited back then, but just look at the site from 2000! Its the 2004 equivalent of a boring corporate site with some fun bits mixed in.

2005-2010 - Archive Link
OK this was the big one! They kept this site for five years; and in web-time 2005-2010 is like 50 years! So much happened during that time. I think this is by far their best site; it takes a lot of the styling of the 03-04 site, but it makes it colorful and fun. Its the first center aligned site for the widescreen era. The topbar really grows up here and becomes something you might want to actually click. Its hard to see in the screenshot, but the dotted inner-content background from the 2002 design actually makes a welcome return here as does the more defined layout. I'd love to say more here, but it's just a great design, it takes everything from the earlier phases and just perfects them; whoever made this, you did good, and clearly Lego knew it because they kept it for 50 years

2011-2014 - Archive Link
This is the last Flash version of the site (The screenshot is not loading something I think!); I suspect they might have kept it longer, however by 2014 Flash was out and they could not have maintained this site. This is in a lot of ways the first truly "modern" site. It has a modern topbar that will not change much from here on out and it has a vast hero image. The visual style is very much of its era, it reminds me of the Sims 3 or SimCity 2013; its rounded, bubbly and a bit generic, but not unpleasant. This is the first truly widescreen capable site and prob the first with some mobile friendly features. The glassy transparency effect is actually very cool and something that wont appear again until mid 2020s in site design.

2014-2015 - Archive Link
This was a short lived one; its essentially a more boring version of the 2011 site with some of the outer spacing removed (again for mobile compatibility most likely). Its also more visually stripped back, the hero image is now the entire central focus, and that's how it will stay from this point on. You can see this era really starts to de-emphasize information and treats the site more like a magazine ad. You can also see the start of flat-design creeping in here on the "Whats New" font.

2015-2018 - Archive Link
This is an improvement over the last one in my view. The big shift here is embracing the flat-design wave that overtook the world and abolished the oppression gradients in the mid 2010s

In this case though I think they did it well; the topbar icons are colorful, the font is chunky and nice. Most of the change here is in the top bar though and that marks a really major moment in web design of this era where almost the entire website's feeling and structure was compressed into the top bar, the rest of the page acted as a kind of content overflow for the top bar. In this era you could have a terrible website as long as the topbar was good! I'd also note that its really starting to drift away from feeling like a lego site here, there's not a lot of lego iconography left outside of images of the toys themselves. (in my view this was their last good site design, although its not nearly as fun as the 2005-2010 era)

~~ The great SPLIT! From this point on the site is fully split between a Grown Ups site and a Kids games site; you can tell they quite literally split elements from the 2015 site into two sites and its the start of a major downhill slide for the site; I think this split is physiologically disgusting; it diminishes the intelligence of kids and the inner-child of adults. It completely goes against the fact that lego is loved by people of all ages and the site should reflect that ~~

2018-2019 - Archive Link

Grown Ups Site:
This is a modern corporate site, they clear gave up on trying to make it fun or interesting in any way (god forbid grown ups should want to have fun). It's made to be easy for them to develop rather than interesting for a visitor to visit. I frankly think, if YOU designed this site, you should feel shame about your life and you should quit your job as a web developer because you've given up and you're doing harm. (This site was thankfully short lived)

Kids Site:
I am not a kid, but I was one once, and I don't think this would have worked well for me. Its colorful and kids like that, but its very overwhelming. I think the idea is kids can just click stuff and not worry about intentional navigation. Its also clearly borrowing from tablet-site design and I assume is intended to be used by iPad kids; however as a kid, I did in-fact still have a brain, and this would have insulted it. All that said, I do appreciate some of the attention to detail with the little clips and strings holding the images up.

2019-2020 - Archive Link

2019 Grown Ups Site:
Ahah, the yellow topbar finally returns (last seen in 2000) - clearly they realized that the earlier grown-ups site was soul-dead and tried (a little) to make it feel more Lego-y again; it is an improvement. This is peak flat-design, any kind of depth has been stripped out by now, but they have re-discoverd icons and added them back to the upper topbar. (Well done guys, I'm sure that took a lot of meetings!)

2020 Kids Site:
I know I said the last one was overwhelming and they fixed that.. but they did so by just making it boring?? This is a bad site; I think the screenshot is missing some stuff; but the pointless topbar, the weird hard to see new lower bar pretending to be an iPhone-style interface, the weird small list of sub-brands - its not good! And clearly they knew that because this version only lasted a few months. I think what you can see here is a crisis of confidence; as much as I love web design, web design must reflect the thing you are designing around, it cant just exist in a void as an abstract thing. What I'm seeing here is a design that's inspire by the idea of interfaces, more than the idea of lego, its generic kids-design with no grounding in substance, theme or place; so naturally it has no center of gravity or self confidence.

2021-2026(now) - Archive Link

2021 Grown Ups Site:
This is the 2019 site again, but they've taken a step backwards and made it more boring again. It's lost most of its icons and like a lot of modern sites its got a huge amount of wasted space that I personally find stressful. This is like the Tesco of websites, you go in, get what you need, and get out as fast as you can; except unlike Tesco I actually never need to go in because they don't sell food here; they only sell a jaded corporate website that's lost all joy, whimsy or care.

2021 Kids Site:
This is an improvement! It actually feels like a lego site; the topbar is consistent with the grown ups sites and has some links that actually make sense and say what they do. Its got some depth in its icons more like the 2015 site; the crazy sub-brand bar is still there but at least its been made a little easier to comprehend. This should be what the grown up site looks like! Just merge the two back again, its time! That said; I do think the huge search bar is a bit weird; what's a kid supposed to search for? Why is it so big? "What are you looking for?" I'm on the damn lego site, I'm looking for *#0_#*-ing lego!

The pictures are nice! I could see 8 year old me saving those as wallpapers. It needs a virtual pet.. maybe that's its issue though.. it looks exactly like the modern Neopets site and probably 50 others.

2024 Kids Site:
I give up, they gave up? We all give up?? They made a bad clone of Apple TV, but its got Lego content? I don't see how this relates to Lego, I don't see why kids would enjoy this. Its not original, its not fun, its not good. If you designed this site, go home and try again, or better yet, go home and play with some Lego, you've clearly never done that before. I'll repeat, this is really really bad, and its not just me being soft on retro designs and hard on modern designs, the designer/agency does not understand their subject or what webdesign should do for a visitor. You can do something SO much better than this, while still speaking to a modern audience; you can make use of the company history, with over 40 years of toys and video games, to create depth with content, and you can express that content using the design language of lego with its bricks and colours and textures and jokes! - I would die to be the head designer of the lego website, and yet its handed over to whoever made this. I find it really depressing that a company that once called kids "our most important person" on the front page of their website in 1996, would treat kids with this slop today; kids deserve better than that, and lego should be ashamed of this site.

THIS HAS BEEN A MELON WEB DESIGN ANALYSIS COVERING 30 YEARS OF LEGO WEB DESIGN. THANK YOU

What are you're thought's on LEGOs place in web design history? What are some eras you enjoyed seeing? What are some ideas you think we lost along the way? What would you do if you were making Legos site today?