Historical Inspiration For the Color and Shape of Lego Parts

[Paradosis]

I've read that modern artist Piet Mondrian was for years an inspiration for Lego (someone even mentioned him a day or two ago on this forum), or perhaps Neoplasticism generally. Squares and rectangles and primary colors and so on. I had always assumed until a few years ago that the colors were just chosen because they were the ones the company assumed would most appeal to children, and the shapes were just the most obvious choice for building structures. But now I'm curious about the story behind this. Does anyone know if there's something available in English, maybe a simple article, or an art student needed a graduate school thesis/dissertation and their research included something on this.

[koalayummies]

15 hours ago, Paradosis said:

(someone even mentioned him a day or two ago on this forum)

If you're talking about my post from the 'not a toy anymore' thread I was responding to the discussion veering off into the always predictable and repetitious debate about how "Lego was better back in my day" and how the old sets were (jokingly) like building with a Mondrian-restricted color palette compared to the wide and versatile selection of colors we have today.

No idea whether Mondrian's work was actually an inspiration for the early days of Lego or if primary colors were simply due to plastic color manufacturing capabilities of the times, safety/quality concerns, costs or what have you. All I know is the color selection is better now and Lego is so much better today then it was whenever whoever is always saying it was back then.

Though you might find this to be an interesting read: The Changing Palette of Lego 1975-2014

And this is from Quora so questionable veracity and non-existent sources/citations but one of the respondents claims that Lego was inspired by Mondrian's work. Again, no citation to back up this claim.

Its Quora, and also they don't cite any sources so take it as you will they say they're a Lego Ambassador.

[Peppermint_M]

Also, those basic colours excluded the shades associated with military hardware. 

That was why they produced a yellow castle! 

[MAB]

And they couldn't do a White Castle, as they didn't sell burgers! Although their square burgers would actually have fit LEGO's design ethic.

[tafkatb]

I watched the LEGO episode of The Toys That Made Us yesterday, and they also mentioned that Mondrian was the inspiration for the color palette, and that this was LEGO's first major improvement over the more drab colors offered by existing plastic building blocks like Kiddicraft.

David C. Robertson and Bill Breen's excellent Brick by Brick also makes a passing mention: "The new product was patented in 1958 and within a few years bright yellow, red and blue Lego bricks, colors inspired by the paintings of the Dutch Modernist painter Piet Mondrian, were scattered across the floors of millions of homes."

[AmperZand]

2 x 4 LEGO bricks were available in green from the mid-‘50s, a colour that doesn’t feature in Mondrian’s art (at least, not in his most famous pieces). On the other hand, black was used extensively by Mondrian but did not appear as 2 x 4 LEGO bricks until 1960. If Mondrian really was the inspiration for LEGO’s colours, you would have expected black to be introduced before green. That doesn’t mean that Mondrian had no influence at all on LEGO, only that, at most, it was a partial inspiration.

[tafkatb]

If I'm remembering this correctly, green was part of the initial palette for Automatic Binding Bricks but then actually cut out of the lineup (or at least drastically reduced) with the launch of System i Leg. Apparently there was even some extensive internal debate about the inclusion of green bricks around that time. I'll have to go back and watch the show again to recall exactly what they said about it.

I sent David C. Robertson a message to see if he has a primary/contemporary source he can share for the Mondrian connection his book mentions. For years I've thought of it as a "yeah, sounds about right" bit of inconsequential historical ephemera, but now my interest has been very much piqued and I really want to get to the bottom of it!

[Ulrik Hansen]

Great little big subject. It seems coincidential how both the LEGO Group and Piet Mondrian are known for something they took from someone else and popularized. According to different biographies like the wikipedia article Piet Mondrian was inspired to use primary colors from Bart Van Der Leck early last century. No less noteworthy is the name of his exhibition back then: 'The New Plastic in Painting' 😅

Regarding the exclusion of green in the brick sortiment (from when they revived thier colors away from the kiddi-palette) could be that green is not a (modern) natural color for houses and other structures. You want to reserve green for the ground and other vegetation.

It took the Classic Space line for TLG to give in to introducing gray for bricks etc. Before that gray was not considered vibrant enough for children to be interested in them. I suspect TLG thought the same of black around the time of the redesign and patenting. White was a given or else the Christiansen family would not be able to recreate churches in the quintessence colors of that locality of Denmark that was very important to them 🙂

So, when simplifying into a system you don't want things to be up for misinterpretation. In my own microscale MOC experience I exclude certain colors from buildings/structures because I need them elsewhere. No less in the upcoming revision of my Copenhagen-model.

• I don't use green (28 and 37) for structures because it's reserved for vegetation (grass, trees and bushes).
• I don't use red (21), orange (25) and other plasticy colors for structures because it works way better for vehicles (cars, trucks and busses).
• Blue (23) used to be strictly for water but I have switched water to Dark Blue (149) so now Blue has become available for vehicles.
• I don't use Dark Green (141) for vegetation because it quite frankly doesn't mix well with Green and Bright Green and like Dark Brown (308) often appears almost black in certain lighting conditions. Instead Dark Green and Dark Brown works quite well as toned blacks for roofing of different nature.
• Tan (5) and Dark Tan (138) are examples of colors that are "cought in the middle" as they can be used both for ground, buildings, roofs and vehicles. Thus a building standing next to a beach will never be Tan (unless the sand is then bright light yellow or something).

Overall I am refining and modifying my model to become more photorealistic by mostly doing buildings/roofs in earthy colors while vehicles are allowed to stand out on the streets with vibrant colors. Part of this is switching all Orange rooftops to Dark Orange (38) and Medium Nougat (312).

I'm sorry if this became a little off-topic. It's peculiar how limitations can create posibilities 😎

Edited August 13, 2021 by Ulrik Hansen