The Practical Creative

The Practical Creative


LEGO's Magnus Goransson on Playing as Adults and Maintaining your Creative Spark

May 01, 2019

Magnus works at LEGO as Design Director in the Creative Play Lab – where he works with teams to design and develop toys of the future. His work is informed by a huge and constantly growing body of research conducted by LEGO into both how, and why, children play. And in this conversation, we cover a range of topics including:
 
- how LEGO fosters a culture of play amongst it’s employees (and this is really fun)
- the benefits of working in teams to prevent and overcome blocks
- the reality of designing products for a major corporation, particularly as a creative person, and how this can lead to burnout
- why adults prefer to have ‘hobbies’ rather than admit to ‘playing’
- we also talk about how Magnus managed to find alternative outlets for his own creativity as he moved from being a hands-on designer to a director – and this was fascinating
 
And as always, we finish with a challenge to really ‘engulf yourself in play’.
 
So please enjoy!