Book Review: The Art of LEGO Design by Jordan Schwartz; no starch press

It’s been a while since I did a book review, but when I saw this one listed on the O’Reilly Blogger Review Program, I knew I had to delve deeper. We’re a house full of LEGO addicts here, and I fully expected to love this tome, but in fact, I *LOVED* it!

To quote from the book’s Introduction: “While step-by-step instructions can show you how to re-create specific models, they fail to explain how and why the original builder made certain design choices. This book reveals those thought processes.” And it does – with lots of practical information on design and building techniques, and interviews with some astonishingly talented LEGO masters.

The Art of LEGO Design coverThe book is packed with beautiful illustrations of real world builds, which provides one variety of inspiration. But it also goes to extreme geek levels with details of brick styles, lengths, heights, angles, colours, production dates, and so on. To say nothing of the copious practical examples of how building techniques (for example, building curves using series of slopes of varying angles), plus a whole section on creating mosaics using LEGO pieces (with extreme detail on measurements, ratios and geometry).

The sections on buildings and furniture were my favourites, but the ones on robots and spaceships will tick more boxes for other members of the family!

Aside from the wealth of information already in the book, there are plenty of references to online resources where you can find further inspiration and even source spare parts for your own creations!

You can find out more about the book and order it direct from O’Reilly here.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough. I got my review copy free, but expect I’ll be investing in a couple more for certain friends and family having seen what it has to offer.

ETA: Especially loving Luke Hutchinson’s Flickr feed, found as a result of his interview and model pics in the book.

Author: smurphy

Writer, mother, gardener, geek...