Building a History

Author: Sarah Herman
Publisher: Grub Street Publishers
ISBN: 1783408049
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 525

Book Description
The story of these beloved bricks and the people who built an empire with them. From its inception in the early 1930s right up until today, the LEGO Group’s history is as colorful as the toys it makes. Few other playthings share the LEGO brand’s creative spirit, educational benefits, resilience, quality, and universal appeal. This history charts the birth of the LEGO Group from the workshop of a Danish carpenter and its steady growth as a small, family-run toy manufacturer to its current position as a market-leading, award-winning brand. The company’s growing catalogue of products—including the earliest wooden toys, plastic bricks, play themes and other building systems such as DUPLO, Technic, and MINDSTORMS—are chronicled in detail, alongside the manufacturing process, LEGOLAND parks, licensed toys, and computer games. Learn all about how LEGO pulled itself out of an economic crisis and embraced technology to make building blocks relevant to twenty-first century children, and discover the vibrant fan community of kids and adults whose conventions, websites, and artwork keep the LEGO spirit alive. Building a History will have you reminiscing about old Classic Space sets, rummaging through the attic for forgotten minifigure friends, and playing with whatever LEGO bricks you can get your hands on (even if it means sharing with your kids).

LEGO and Philosophy

Author: Roy T. Cook
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119193974
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
How profound is a little plastic building block? It turns out the answer is “very”! 22 chapters explore philosophy through the world of LEGO which encompasses the iconic brick itself as well as the animated televisions shows, feature films, a vibrant adult fan base with over a dozen yearly conventions, an educational robotics program, an award winning series of videogames, hundreds of books, magazines, and comics, a team-building workshop program for businesses and much, much more. Dives into the many philosophical ideas raised by LEGO bricks and the global multimedia phenomenon they have created Tackles metaphysical, logical, moral, and conceptual issues in a series of fascinating and stimulating essays Introduces key areas of philosophy through topics such as creativity and play, conformity and autonomy, consumption and culture, authenticity and identity, architecture, mathematics, intellectual property, business and environmental ethics Written by a global group of esteemed philosophers and LEGO fans A lively philosophical discussion of bricks, minifigures, and the LEGO world that will appeal to LEGO fans and armchair philosophers alike

Great LEGO® Sets

Author: Daniel Lipkowitz
Publisher: DK Children
ISBN: 9780241011638
Category : LEGO toys
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
This stunning LEGO® book is a visual history of more than 300 of the best LEGO sets, from the first Town Plans of the 1950s to today's dazzling sets. It comes with an exclusive retro-style LEGO set for you to build! Packed with stunning photography and fascinating facts, Great LEGO® Sets explores the history of LEGO sets in magnificent detail. It showcases the best-ever sets in the LEGO Group's long history, including much-loved classic 1970s and 1980s Space and Castle sets and the latest LEGO® Star Wars(tm) and THE LEGO® MOVIE sets. Follow the timelines of LEGO set history, discover how LEGO sets are made and see hundreds of LEGO sets in amazing detail, superbly captioned and annotated. Created in full collaboration with the LEGO Group, Great LEGO® Sets reveals exclusive insights from LEGO designers into how LEGO sets are made. LEGO, the LEGO logo, the Brick and Knob configuration and the Minifigure are trademarks of the LEGO Group. © 2015 The LEGO Group. Produced by Dorling Kindersley under licence from the LEGO Group.

Brick by Brick

Author: David Robertson
Publisher: Currency
ISBN: 0307951618
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Book Description
Sometimes radical yet always applicable, Brick by Brick abounds with real-world lessons for unleashing breakthrough innovation in your organization, using LEGO--which experienced one of the most remarkable business transformations in recent history--as a business model. As LEGO failed to keep pace with the revolutionary changes in kids' lives and began sliding into irrelevance, the company's leaders implemented some of the business world's most widely espoused prescriptions for boosting innovation. Ironically, these changes pushed the iconic toymaker to the brink of bankruptcy, showing that what works in theory can fail spectacularly in the brutally competitive global economy. It took a new LEGO management team--faced with the growing rage for electronic toys, few barriers to entry, and ultra-demanding consumers (ten-year old boys)--to reinvent the innovation rule book and transform LEGO into one of the world's most profitable, fastest-growing companies. Along the way, Brick by Brick reveals how LEGO: - Became truly customer-driven by co-creating with kids as well as its passionate adult fans - Looked beyond products and learned to leverage a full-spectrum approach to innovation - Opened its innovation process by using both the "wisdom of crowds" and the expertise of elite cliques - Discovered uncontested, "blue ocean" markets, even as it thrived in brutally competitive red oceans - Gave its world-class design teams enough space to create and direction to deliver built a culture where profitable innovation flourishes Whether you're a senior executive looking to make your company grow, an entrepreneur building a startup from scratch, or a fan who wants to instill some of that LEGO magic in your career, you'll learn how to build your own innovation advantage, brick by brick.

A Million Little Bricks

Author: Sarah Herman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1620878674
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 507

Book Description
Toy of the Year, Toy of the Century, Greatest Toy of All Time . . . there aren't many titles that haven’t been bestowed on LEGO toys, and it’s not hard to see why. From its inception in the early 1930s right up until today, the LEGO Group’s history is as colorful as the toys it makes. Few other playthings share the LEGO brand’s creative spirit, educative benefits, resilience, quality, and universal appeal. The LEGO name is now synonymous with playtime, but it wasn’t always so. This history charts the birth of the LEGO Group in the workshop of a Danish carpenter and its steady growth as a small, family-run toy manufacturer to its current position as a market-leading, award-winning brand. The company’s ever-increasing catalogof products—including the earliest wooden toys, plastic bricks, play themes, and other building systems such as DUPLO, Technic, and MINDSTORMS—are chronicled in detail, alongside the manufacturing process, LEGOLAND parks, licensed toys, and computer games. Learn all about how LEGO pulled itself out of an economic crisis and embraced technology to make building blocks relevant to twenty-first-century children and discover the vibrant fan community of kids and adults whose conventions, websites, and artwork keep the LEGO spirit alive. As nostalgic as it is contemporary, A Million Little Bricks will have you reminiscing about old Classic Space sets, rummaging through the attic for forgotten Minifigure friends, and playing with whatever LEGO bricks you can get your hands on (even if it means sharing with your kids).

LEGO Studies

Author: Mark J.P. Wolf
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317935454
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Book Description
Since the "Automatic Binding Bricks" that LEGO produced in 1949, and the LEGO "System of Play" that began with the release of Town Plan No. 1 (1955), LEGO bricks have gone on to become a global phenomenon, and the favorite building toy of children, as well as many an AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO). LEGO has also become a medium into which a wide number of media franchises, including Star Wars, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, Batman, Superman, Lord of the Rings, and others, have adapted their characters, vehicles, props, and settings. The LEGO Group itself has become a multimedia empire, including LEGO books, movies, television shows, video games, board games, comic books, theme parks, magazines, and even MMORPGs. LEGO Studies: Examining the Building Blocks of a Transmedial Phenomenon is the first collection to examine LEGO as both a medium into which other franchises can be adapted and a transmedial franchise of its own. Although each essay looks at a particular aspect of the LEGO phenomenon, topics such as adaptation, representation, paratexts, franchises, and interactivity intersect throughout these essays, proposing that the study of LEGO as a medium and a media empire is a rich vein barely touched upon in Media Studies.

From an Idea to Lego

Author: Lowey Bundy Sichol
Publisher: HMH Books For Young Readers
ISBN: 1328954935
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 131

Book Description
For fans of the successful Who Was series, From an Idea to Lego is a behind-the-bricks look into the world's famous toy company, with humorous black & white illustrations throughout. Today, LEGO is one of the biggest toy companies in the world, but a long time ago, a Danish carpenter, Ole Kirk Christiansen, started with just an idea. Find out more about LEGO's origins, those famous bricks, and their other inventive toys and movie ventures in this illustrated nonfiction book! Find out the origin the name "LEGO." (Hint: it combines two Danish words) See how LEGO grew from a carpentry shop to a multi-platform toy company. Discover how LEGO bricks are made and how they came up with their design.

The Secret Life of Lego(r) Bricks

Author: Daniel Konstanski
Publisher: Sourcebooks
ISBN: 9781464234415
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
From the first hollow bricks to the complex shapes and building techniques of today, this visually stunning book is a LEGO(R) history like no other--and the first official book for Adult Fans of LEGO bricks. LEGO(R) bricks are design icons and marvels of engineering. Having remained virtually unchanged for over fifty years, the brick is still the center of the LEGO System in Play, in which each brick connects to every other brick, allowing the construction of almost anything you can imagine. LEGO minifigures may be the friendly smiling faces of the LEGO world, but bricks in all their different shapes and forms are its very foundation. This book sets out to explore the brick's rich history in unparalleled detail and full color. Granted unprecedented access by the LEGO Group, author Daniel Konstanski reveals for the first time how and why new LEGO bricks are made, speaking to the people involved with each crucial step, from the so-called "rock stars," the set designers, through to the element designers, design masters, graphic designers, elements testers and approvers, plastics technicians, and many more. This book is the one fans have always wanted: a truly behind the scenes look at the story of the beloved LEGO brick and the company which makes it, with a wealth of new visual material from the LEGO Archive in Billund. LEGO, the LEGO logo, the Minifigure and the Brick and Knob configurations are trademarks and/or copyrights of the LEGO Group. (c)2024 The LEGO Group. All rights reserved.

The Design of Childhood

Author: Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1632866358
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Book Description
From building blocks to city blocks, an eye-opening exploration of how children's playthings and physical surroundings affect their development. Parents obsess over their children's playdates, kindergarten curriculum, and every bump and bruise, but the toys, classrooms, playgrounds, and neighborhoods little ones engage with are just as important. These objects and spaces encode decades, even centuries of changing ideas about what makes for good child-rearing--and what does not. Do you choose wooden toys, or plastic, or, increasingly, digital? What do youngsters lose when seesaws are deemed too dangerous and slides are designed primarily for safety? How can the built environment help children cultivate self-reliance? In these debates, parents, educators, and kids themselves are often caught in the middle. Now, prominent design critic Alexandra Lange reveals the surprising histories behind the human-made elements of our children's pint-size landscape. Her fascinating investigation shows how the seemingly innocuous universe of stuff affects kids' behavior, values, and health, often in subtle ways. And she reveals how years of decisions by toymakers, architects, and urban planners have helped--and hindered--American youngsters' journeys toward independence. Seen through Lange's eyes, everything from the sandbox to the street becomes vibrant with buried meaning. The Design of Childhood will change the way you view your children's world--and your own.

A Million Little Bricks

Author: Sarah Herman
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
ISBN: 1620870541
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Book Description
The LEGO Group's history is as colorful as the toys it makes. This history charts the birth of the LEGO Group in the workshop of a Danish carpenter and its steady growth as a small, family-run toy manufacturer to its current position as a market-leading, award-winning brand.