Scottish toy designer Amy Corbett built dream career from Lego

From childhood dreams of fashion design to judging an American TV competition, it has been a "rollercoaster" career for Scottish designer Amy Corbett.

Her love of creativity and maths helped her build her "dream job" at Lego.

While the coronavirus pandemic stalled leisure travel, Amy swapped her office in Denmark for a TV studio to present Lego Masters USA.

It has been an unexpected journey from playing with a box of bricks at her home near Glasgow 25 years ago.

Amy, a senior design manager at Lego, now runs a team of 10 designers at Lego's headquarters in Denmark.

The company has been one of the world's most popular toymakers and last year saw its fastest sales growth in five years, helped by locked-down families buying bigger Lego sets they could make together.

"I always wanted a job that would take me abroad," Amy said, but she hadn't realised that the "dream job" in Denmark would lead to the opportunity to be a judge on a TV show in the US.

"It's certainly something I never expected myself doing, but when the opportunity came up I jumped at it," Amy added. "It's been a bit of a rollercoaster.

"It's a big jump from going behind the scenes in the office to being on camera and on national TV but I've really enjoyed it."

'Bake off for bricks'

Lego Masters USA, which is now being aired in the UK on Channel 4, is presented by Will Arnett, the voice of Lego Batman, with Amy and Jamie Berard as judges.

"We like to think of it a little bit like Bake Off," she said. "We have 10 teams of awesome creatives and every week we set them a new challenge to build something amazing. You can expect to see those tiny little Lego bricks as you have never seen them before."

Working on the set surrounded by 14 cameras, when it was "go, go , go all the time" was "very exciting" for Amy, who had never worked in TV before.

Amy Corbett and Jamie Berard appears on Lego Masters USA with actor Will Arnett

Her Scottish accent was a "bit of a concern" at first, but turned out to be a hit with the US audience.

Compared to the UK's warm family show, Amy said the US version was supersized with "bigger sets, bigger challenges and incredible talent".

The original UK series had entrants as young as nine, but adult builders make up the teams on the American programme, which was also developed by Glasgow and London-based independent production company Tuesday's Child.

'Missing Scotland'

During filming she and fellow "brickmaster" Jamie would reflect on how lucky they were.

"We already had the dream job at Lego and now we were making this programme," she said.

"The show really proves that Lego is for everyone, from kids just putting a couple of bricks together to make an animal, to adults using it as an art form and making huge creations."

Living in Denmark and filming in the US during the pandemic meant working around travel restrictions with lots of quarantine, but she has been unable to return home to Scotland for a year and half.

"I am really hoping that things will open up soon and I can get a trip over to see my family and my friends in Scotland." she said. "I really miss it."

In the meantime her parents and brother, who have become used to seeing her on video calls, have been able to watch her on the TV too.

'Big box of bricks'

Amy started working at Lego not long after graduating, beginning as a junior designer on the Lego Friends range in 2013 before moving on to Disney and Lego Movie 2 sets.

Her team launched Lego Dots last year, which uses tiny tiles to encourage two-dimensional pattern-making on products from wristbands to pen pots and picture frames.

"We always design thinking of kids today," she said. "But I do think I would have loved Lego Dots."

Amy Corbett led the Lego Dots design team to create pattern building toys for children, including wrist bands

As a child growing up in the village of Uplawmoor near Glasgow, she toyed with career aspirations such as fashion designer and artist before she realised that toy designer was even an option.

She told BBC Scotland's Good Morning Scotland she was not a Lego obsessive as a child.

"I played with Lego with my brother when we were kids," she said. "When we were really little we had the big box of bricks but as I got a little bit older I fell out of Lego. I felt there wasn't anything for me.

"It wasn't until I joined the company that I really got back into it. But we take that into account and think how can we create Lego experiences for kids, adults, everyone over the world, so that everyone can find something relevant for them."

Amy went to Eastwood High School in Newton Mearns, where she studied sciences and maths alongside art and design, then did a masters degree in product design engineering - a course jointly awarded by the University of Glasgow and Glasgow School of Art.

"I always loved being creative and also really loved maths," she said.

"Every time I got a project, no matter how engineering based, I would always twist to be something fun and playful and creative."

And her advice to budding Lego designers looking to follow the dream was to get building.

"Creativity is the key, and being hands-on with the bricks," she said. "Whenever you can get ideas out, go for it, whenever you can get your hands on the bricks, build, build, build.

"And if you are picking your education, I think certainly pick something that is product design-based or industrial design. But the more creative the better, and we're open to everyone."