Brick Blueprint Postmortem
I had a half-baked plan to sell instructions for new models you could build with pieces from specific LEGO sets. The name I came up with for this project was Brick Blueprint, which I mentioned here a couple times last year before deciding to shelve the idea. Earlier this summer, I revived the idea and built a storefront using Shopify and FetchApp. I created a “blueprint”-inspired instructions template and worked out a streamlined pipeline to produce the instructions, from bricks to LDraw files to final PDFs. I designed a bunch of models. There was a Twitter account, too.
Marketing is no fun, though – and more to the point, store hosting isn’t cheap when you’re bootstrapping sales from zero. So, after a midsummer hiatus, I decided this is not how I would make my first million. The store has been put on ice and the instructions have been posted to Flickr.
Here are the twenty-six sample models I produced. These are free. Play well!
Links to the LDraw files for each model are available from the image pages.
As conceived, Brick Blueprint may not have been commercially viable, but I did learn some useful things such as how to set up a functional web store and how Google AdWords works from an advertiser’s perspective. I learned some new tricks for my favorite LDraw tools. Last but not least, I put together this nice little portfolio of pocket-size models built with a highly limited palette of parts. LEGO, hire me!