One of the interesting things about living in Southern California is that I get to talk quite a few of the model designers who are working on exhibits and installations for LEGOLAND Malaysia, which is scheduled to open in April of 2012. I get to hear about it, but I don’t get to see. I’ve also heard several of my friends here in SoCal talk about their own training process as well as the crew of Malaysian designers who have been hired and trained to work on the same projects. Bill Toenjes was nice enough to send us a link to an article in Johor Buzz, an English language Malay news site, which ran a great profile of several of the team in Malaysia.

We in the adult LEGO community usually get the (very interesting) perspective of adult fans who go on to work for LEGO or LEGOLAND, but the numerous straight-out-of-their-dark-age graphic designers, artists, engineers, and architects are kind of overlooked, though they seem to make up the bulk of the model and set design teams. It’s interesting to hear their perspective.