Leg Godt!
March 10, 2011 5:01 PM   Subscribe

Jim Hughes loves illustration and graphic design, as witness his gorgeous and eclectic blog Codex xcix. He also loves Lego, as you can tell from his delightfully detailed Brick Fetish site. His newest blog post combines these two loves into Lego: A Natural History of Package Design.

Be sure to check out the Codex xcix archives for more great posts, on topics as diverse as Vesalius's anatomy and, um, Fritz Willis's anatomy (NSFW).
posted by Horace Rumpole (7 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Fabulous blog++. Nice bloke. And he's on the twitter thing too.
posted by peacay at 5:38 PM on March 10, 2011


Yeah, there's a pretty good chance I found out about him from you RTing him, so (via) ↑
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:03 PM on March 10, 2011


Lego boxes are OK, but the really genius Lego design thing (other than the toy itself) are the instructions. In 2D and completely wordlessly, they specify the construction of a complex 3D object more or less unambiguously. It's an amazing feat. Seriously, if you are interested in infographics, study Lego assembly instructions. They are the Holy Grail.
posted by DU at 6:08 PM on March 10, 2011


This trend where people use "fetish" to describe sexual-seeming fascination with things that aren't really sexual may seem very ironic, but that's actually getting fairly close to the original meaning of the word.
posted by LogicalDash at 6:11 PM on March 10, 2011 [1 favorite]


I remember my parents buying me lego sets when I was a kid, in the early 1970's.

Sets like the 102 and 105 would be packed in flat, 2 inch high boxes with lids that swung up to reveal the contents beneath transparent plastic. They were all the same thickness but varied in size from half a foot square to a foot and a half by two feet for the larger sets. All of the bricks were sorted in the original packaging so you could see what you were getting.

Themes were scarce and not enforced. I remember when architectural doors, windows, and roof bricks were introduced. I lost interest in the system about when the lego people showed up. This was not lego. Or at least, it wasn't my lego. Lego trains? That's the 102 with its blue motor module and separate battery pack and wire plug leads and the separate rails for each side of the track that had to be connected with 2x8 ties. Other lego trains are not lego trains to me.
posted by localroger at 6:17 PM on March 10, 2011


This was not lego. Or at least, it wasn't my lego.

Everything should always be exactly as it was when I was 10 years old and never change.
posted by Legomancer at 6:35 AM on March 11, 2011


This is an amazing blog. I spent an hour last night reading about the history of the alphabet, and was just blown away.
posted by you're a kitty! at 8:56 AM on March 11, 2011


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