The inspiration for this article came from laying out the box for LEGO 75359 332nd Ahsoka's Clone Trooper Battle Pack for storage. This is the furthest I got with a digital recreation of the packaging. It appears that the promotional and support assets for a given set may be exact or slightly modified versions of what's seen on the packaging, which in itself may shed light on various previous versions of the box.

When I saw the unfolded box net, I thought I could learn something from it, since my professional work involves packaging design. To illustrate what I learned, I recreated as much of the box as I could using resources I had access to online. This process helped me discover that there are certain parameters and rules that all packaging must adhere to. Let’s take a look at what those rules are.

Rules for voting

An important task once the LEGO designer gets dielines (the placeholders used to help with the layout of graphics) is to set a 5mm margin for all critical assets on the box. Outside of some of the largest boxes where this would be too narrow and the figure would be doubled, we look for an almost guaranteed 5mm margin from each edge to ensure that each box looks consistent and clean on each of its six faces. These margins also ensure that box art looks consistent across a series of sets in a theme when displayed side by side on a shelf.

The next thing to cover is of course how to fit the big red “LEGO” square on as many sides of the box as will fit! There should always be a portion of free space equal to one fifth of the width of the LEGO logo to fit on the box, regardless of whether the set is from a licensed theme or an in-house property. Since the logo in this case was 20mm wide, the 4mm free space is overridden by the 5mm margin rule anyway.

Historically, neither of these has been a hard and fast rule for the company. When The LEGO Group wanted a theme that spoke for the product rather than the LEGO brand, you get things like the Galidor product packaging, where the hierarchy of information dictates that LEGO is just the purveyor of these awesome toys, and Galidor is the cool new thing to focus on.

It's probably not fair to use Galidor as an example given its more experimental nature, but you can see the difference now, right?

Seeing is believing

The banner artwork at the top of each box is often an ever-changing asset. If you’ve been following my LEGO Typography series, you’ve seen all the amazing variations on the uniform design language, even in the most basic themes. Star Wars is no stranger to uniform design evolution. Each new wave of sets has a striking new image adorning the box to define the era in which that particular wave of sets was released.

If you're a fan of Ninjago, designer Mike Rayhawk briefly discussed some of the packaging work he did for this theme.

Focus on the product itself

Of course, the front of every LEGO set box has to feature the set itself. Throughout history, The LEGO Group has used a range of techniques to achieve the best representation of what the customer is buying: hand-drawn line art, gouache paint, and plain old photography.

As workflow speeds increased and technology evolved, designers were able to use temporary renders. Modeled packaging could be shown to photographers who could more accurately capture the set with less communication between departments if things didn’t quite line up or meet standards.

Here is an example of a preliminary box that was used for retail planogram purposes (the placement of a product on a shelf) versus the image that was used in the final box art. The photographer was able to get a near perfect match for the pose that was laid out in the early artwork.

The LEGO Movie brought new levels of accuracy when it comes to photorealistic renderings of LEGO bricks with sub-surface scattering, micro-scratches, small surface warping and other imperfections creating a lifelike replica of the bricks we know.

All the investment in photorealistic renderings for The LEGO Movie has not been in vain. The design workflow for packaging has shifted completely to a computer-generated process. It’s amazing to think that an image like this is no longer a photograph.

One honorable mention I want to make is a personal favorite: Exo Force. A mix of rendered set images, digital and traditionally illustrated artwork, and great art direction was crucial to capturing the manga/anime inspired aesthetic. The mixed media art style that Exo Force referenced had to be carried over into the packaging. What resulted was a truly unique style for the packaging, complete with a tech overview of the various mechs and a small comic to set the tone of the story for you. All of this came together to support an excitingly detailed cover artwork that just jumps off the page of every box in the line. To me, this is the pinnacle of LEGO packaging creativity.

Universally understood

A box may have a design that is tailored to the country in which it is sold. But what can you do for people whose native language is not the language spoken in that country?

In a previous article I briefly discussed Cera Pro, the fantastic brand font that The LEGO Group uses for the vast majority of its retail communication needs. To reiterate, one of the font's strengths is the variety of glyphs available for European languages. With just under 1,000 glyphs covering Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and other localized letterforms, Cera Pro can be used for most regions where LEGO sets are sold.

For the languages ​​Cera Pro can’t cover, Noto Sans thankfully fills in the gaps. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic characters are all included, so almost anyone looking at the box will be able to read one important piece of information: the set name!

Worldwide recognized

There is another group of additions, all of which have their own rules regarding minimum size, margins and such. This consists of all the certifications and legally established environmental symbols.

On any given LEGO set you will likely find the following:

• CE marking - 'Conformité Européenne', the European conformity mark indicates that the manufacturer or importer confirms the conformity of the goods with European health, safety and environmental protection standards. The CE mark is required for goods sold in the European Economic Area.

• UKCA Mark - 'UK Conformity Assessed', the UKCA mark was intended to replace the CE mark for goods sold in the UK after Brexit in 2020, but both marks are currently accepted.

• G-Mark - The Gulf Conformity mark is a certification that indicates that the product complies with all the technical regulations of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In this case, it is mandatory for toys.

• MC Mark - The Malaysian Conformity Mark is a legal mark specifically for toys placed on the Malaysian market that guarantees that the toy is safe.

• Recycling Codes - Internationally recognized symbols that allow consumers to easily identify recyclable materials in their purchases. In this case, 21-PAP refers to non-corrugated cardboard (the box), while 22-PAP refers to plain paper (the instructions).

• Info-Tri - The French recycling initiative banner is now mandatory for products sold in France (and to a lesser extent, it seems, in Italy). It shows what can be recycled and where. From our own experience, the symbols on the box, bags and instructions must be a certain size and line thickness, and this is very strictly controlled!

• 'Pura/Kami Māku' - Japanese recycling markings are divided in the same way as the international recycling codes, with the round symbol for paper and the square for plastic (pura = plastic, māku = marking).

• Green Dot - The Green Dot is an exception here. In some European countries it is mandatory, but in others it is completely voluntary. It simply indicates that the producer has invested money in an effort to reduce packaging waste, or has paid a fee to cover the cost of recycling packaging.

• FSC Certification - The Forestry Stewardship Council 'Mix' certificate indicates that the product or packaging is made from a mixture of materials from FSC-certified forests, recycled materials and/or FSC-controlled wood.

• Choking hazard - The 'EN 71-6' image is required by law for all toys sold in the European Union.

Each of these symbols represents the quality, environmental responsibility and social concerns that the LEGO Group strives for. In some cases, they are required to allow the product to be sold in a certain country, so it is good to get them all correct. Once a box of a certain size is designed, regardless of theme, these symbols will likely remain in place, removing the difficulty of ensuring that these symbols are accurately placed on every new product of that box size.

The last hurdles

Once all the legalities are taken care of, there is also the seemingly insurmountable but still achievable task of making sure this new set can be catalogued, organised, stored, retrieved, shipped, purchased and enjoyed. Gotta codify it all!

A GTIN-13 barcode (formerly EAN-13) covers most of the bases for selling the product at retail. A series of random, algorithmically generated numbers within a certain range are created specifically for The LEGO Group. These codes allow The LEGO Group to generate a barcode image that can be scanned in a retail environment. The barcode image is linked to an item number for the set, so that all parties can identify which product they have in their hands.

There is even an article number and barcode for the box itself. After all, the box should be treated as its own LEGO element. I assume the barcode on the box, which is hidden when the box is glued, is scanned by whatever machine is helping to pack the boxes.

The final piece of the puzzle is the data matrix and associated codes. This is not, as our April Fools joke suggests, the set’s expiration date. Instead, these are for quality assurance purposes and identify when the set was assembled at the factory. The 5 digit number/letter combination code can be understood as: Day (1) – Week (48) – Factory (g) – Year (3). The factory letter is a somewhat elusive system, but so far some of the locations identified include:

• H = Nyíregyháza, Hungary
• R = Ciénega de Flores, Mexico
• S = Kladno, Czech Republic
• Q = Purkersdorf, Austria
• G = Jiaxing, China

The set I referred to for the artwork must then have been produced on November 27, the first day of the 48th week, assembled in the Jiaxing factory in 2023. That's satisfyingly specific!

Packing things

We’re just scratching the surface of what LEGO packaging designers have to consider when creating the feeling you get when you walk into the toy aisle! It’s a lot to take care of; and when all is said and done, what we notice is more important than these often-overlooked things.

Nevertheless, I hope this article has shed some light on something you've been thinking about. Because great packaging is about thinking outside the box.