Jens Nygaard Knudsen

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Jens Nygaard Knudsen
Gender:	Male
Job:	LEGO Set Designer
Nationality:	Denmark
Notable:	Creator of the LEGO minifigure and LEGO Space

Jens Nygaard Knudsen was a set designer for The LEGO Group from 1968 to 2000. He is notable for being the creator of the Minifigure and LEGO Space.

Biography

When Jens Nygaard Knudsen was looking for a job, he found an advertisement for a job position as a model builder at The LEGO Group in a local Danish newspaper. His first task was to build hundreds of small LEGO Town cars in different colours. These models were along the lines of sets 605 Taxi and 420 Police Car. Jens designed much of the early "LEGOLAND" branded LEGO Town sets, along with almost all of the Basic sets.

As time went on, Jens was assigned to make bigger sets including the Fire Station, Police Station and the Hospital. He came up with the idea to include rooftop heliports on these sets—an idea still being incorporated in sets today.

In the 1970s, there were only few LEGO set designers, so Jens, along with his colleague Bent Irving Andersen, developed the early electric train system (with blue tracks and white sleepers). Some of Jens' favorite trains he's designed include 182 Train Set with Motor and 7710 Push-Along Passenger Steam Train. When making the 'Basic' themed sets, Jens always wanted to push a futuristic style, as seen in set 733 Universal Building Set and 744 Universal Building Set.

Jens also created the LEGO Space theme, designing the first space sets 358 Rocket Base and 367 Moon Landing. At the time, it was difficult to make a lot of color changes, and grey LEGO elements were not considered bright enough to be the main color in a toy, so after some experimentation, Jens decided that blue looked technical enough, and the sets were produced with this color predominant.

The LEGO minifigure design drawn by Jens in the 1970s

In the 1970s, Jens designed over 50 concepts for what would later become the LEGO minifigure. In 1978, Jens articulated minifigure design was patented and produced by the LEGO group, and all minifigures to this day use this design.

Sources

• Stafford, Mark J. "The Truth About SPACE!" BrickJournal: Issue 6, Volume 2 Summer 2009: 38-43. Print.