Creating an inspirational dried flower centrepiece

Chris McVeigh takes us on a creative journey through the complexities and challenges of creating the LEGO® Icons Dried Flower Centrepiece (set 10314). Discover how elements inspired the design and the challenges of building an aesthetically pleasing arrangement.

In only four-years, Senior designer Chris McVeigh has produced some very memorable sets. He was behind notable creations from the winter village collection, Elf Club house (set 10275) and Santa’s Visit (set 10293), and he’s even already obtained the accolade of designing a modular with the 2021 Police Station (set 10278). In 2022 he was also the creator behind the heavily nostalgic Atari 2600 (set 10306). A theme that sent him on a mission through his parent’s attic in search of his childhood console, only to discover it had disappeared, well at least he has the brick-built one to admire!  

February 2023 and Chris’s latest creation, the Dried Flower Centrepiece (set 10314) has hit the shelfs. Despite being his second botanicals adventure, these flowers presents quite a conceptual shift away the previous model, the potted Bird of Paradise (set 10289). A rich, autumnal colourway, with a customisable arrangement, various display options, incredible part usage and a modular aspect that allows you to combine multiple versions.

Did your approach for this botanical project differ from your first one?

This one was interesting because the concept was very loosely defined when we started. We went through five major conceptual revisions before we arrived at the dried flower centrepiece. It was great to go through that process, trying very different concepts and seeing what resonated with people around the office. 

Once we locked on to the basic concept things rapidly came together, the colour scheme, the size, types of flowers and botanical items in it. It all seemed to flow quite naturally; the real challenge was figuring out a way that it could be built. It needed to look completely organic, plants heading off in different directions. Managing that from a design aspect was a challenge. I enjoyed trying to figure out the best way to put the plants together that would be best presented to the consumer and how they would build it.

What were the other concepts your explored, how did they lead to the centrepiece layout?

It's hard to be too specific about some of the other concepts because of course we may revisit them again. But I think what really nailed this as a centrepiece is that it really looked like it belonged on a table. From the start one of the things, we wanted was to make it something you can mount on the wall, but over time, that became secondary to the idea of it as a table centrepiece.

Looking at the challenge of the configuration was it intentional to have it open to some customization?

Yes, that was one thing that I wanted to build into the model. The idea that if you wanted to take the initiative you can take the basic components and rearrange them. Many of them are on ball joints, so it is possible to rearrange quite a few things yourself. It's certainly not a requirement and I tried to create an arrangement that was pleasing to the eye for everyone. It's fun when people can take our models and use the basic components and mix them in new ways, we've seen a lot of that with botanical line. It’s really inspiring to see.

How was it decided which flowers should be in there and did that affect what elements and colours to use?

There isn't a simple answer to that, I realise this is a bit of a pun, but it all happened rather organically. We looked for pieces that inspired us to make a specific flower and then in the reverse we look for pieces that we can use to create something already predetermined.  

With the rose design I had got to the point where I had the mudguard elements in a spiralling design, but I didn't have anything for the outer petals. I struggled with it for a while, as I wanted the highlight flowers to be unique and interesting. Then I found this new shell element that allowed me to wrap it around the mud guards creating the outer petals. This is a perfect example of finding a part that allows us to make a specific flower. 

On the other hand, there are elements that just inspire us to make a specific plant or flower. The crown element inspired us to make the wheat. We thought if we can stack these and put them on a bar it will look like wheat. So sometimes the elements inspire the flowers and sometimes we want a specific flower, and we go and find the elements. I think the most interesting one for me however is the orange one using the mini figure epaulets, this was an example of the element leading the flower development rather than vice versa.

Being dried flowers, did that present a challenge getting the colours right? As previous flowers have been quite bright and colourful, whereas this is more Autumnal.

I think part of me wants to say yes, it was kind of a difficult process, but in fact we kind of locked onto the colour scheme very quickly. That doesn't usually happen. So I think it was just a little bit of serendipity in this case. There was a lighter colour scheme that bought in a few more, colours like you see in the rose. However, I wanted to skew it a bit more, to get that autumnal colour scheme so I brought in the dark red, to balance it all out.

When you are designing the colour stage and you don’t have the elements in that colour how do you visualise it and get it right?

Doing this part digitally is the easiest way to visualise these types of things. You can just drop the colour in and then see if it works. That’s certainly the best way for me. Any other way becomes an order of magnitude and much more difficult.

The colour was easier to arrange digitally, but the actual design of the set did this require more physical building?

I physically built this model I think more than any other model I've designed here. Due to the complexity of the construction, I probably built upwards of 40 copies of it. Most of the versions were around how the elements and different sections could be mounted together. How could they be grouped in a way that made sense? Then when we got the mounting structure right, which is mainly ball joints, how where we going to conceal them so that they couldn’t be seen? It's those type of challenges that I think really took a lot of a lot of my focus during development.

Did building in the modularity and different display options make the design process more complex?

As I was developing this, I was exploring ways in which the model could be subdivided so that it would be decodable for consumers to build. It soon became obvious that I would need to divide the build into two to reduce the complexity. Once I had come to this conclusion it was a case of how does this change the build and how can we build on top of this? That's where I think the centrepiece modularity become a real option, it was now more than just doing a nice centrepiece, I started exploring different ways to open it up. My first few versions didn’t feel right you could take it apart and then maybe you put something in between it like an artificial candle, but it didn't feel like it was a complete solution, it didn't feel like it was a LEGO® solution. So, I explored other ways the halves could be combined with additional sets to form a larger centrepiece.  

Eventually I locked on to the simple idea of using an ‘L’ bracket. This allowed me to expand it to 4 spokes and then to 6 spokes while retaining rigidity. Once I locked into the L bracket design, it became clear we can combine two, we can even combine three sets to make a much larger centrepiece. Initially I was a little bit in disbelief, but late in the process I saw the entire centrepiece with artificial candles in the middle of it on a table setting, I was, oh wow, it does work. Up to that point, it was somewhat theoretical but seeing it in context, was a very nice moment. I was very happy with how it looked in that moment. 

Of course, as a fan or a consumer you can go out and you can buy four or five copies and you can chain them all together, it’s possible to go larger but it would certainly affect the overall rigidity.