Creating the LEGO Colors Poster

The Problem

I’ve made quite a few Bricklink and LEGO Bricks & Pieces orders throughout the years. If I really needed to buy all of those individual pieces is debatable. What is certain is that I’ve ordered the wrong parts on one or two occasions. Maybe even three. Definitely not more than twenty.

For example, I would want to order Lavender flowers and order Medium Lavender ones. The picture looked close enough and I couldn’t be bothered to open up a new tab in the browser and check if the color I was buying was actually the color I wanted. Instead, I started to work on a physical LEGO colors list.

My personal solution

The idea was to have a list of LEGO and Bricklink color names with LEGO parts of that color around them. I chose Bricklink names because those were the ones I used, and the LEGO ones because it felt right to include them.

Originally, I only wanted to use the colors that were currently in production, but I soon realized I needed some from the years prior as well to create a visually and functionally appealing assembly.

Now, all I had to figure out was which parts I was going to use and how to represent the color names. Looking at the finished project, it seems obvious I was going to build color plates for each of the LEGO color types. And create stickers for the color names and use the most common parts on the left and the right of the poster. However, back then, it wasn’t obvious at all, and I had to find those obvious solutions through a lot of experimentation. The details of which I shall spare you and just give you the broad strokes.

The troubles I had with the stickers I’ve explained at the end of the embedded video below and I can’t bring myself to repeat the story here.

I’ve had a feeling about which LEGO parts would be represented in many colors, so that’s where I started my search. Soon it became obvious that 1x1 and 1x2 parts worked best for the Solid and Transparent colors, whereas the Metallic, Opalescent, and Glow in the Dark ones needed a custom approach. So that’s what I did.

The color plates turned out to be very helpful even during their own construction process. I was able to see at a glance what pieces were still missing and which ones I already had.

When it was finally done, it looked so gorgeous that all of my doubts about should I share it disappeared.

The shareable solution

The only way I found I could share my color list with the world was by turning it into a poster. And while I was at it, I made several versions so everyone could get the one they liked the most.

There are digital and physical versions, with the US or the UK spelling (color or colour), in several sizes.

The digital versions are meant for viewing on a screen or printing out for personal use. Available in sizes Letter and A4.

The physical versions are printed on demand when you buy them in one of the 32 fulfillment centers worldwide. The LEGO Colors Poster comes in three sizes and the Solid LEGO Colors Poster is available in two.

I personally love the Large LEGO Colors Poster the most because it shows the LEGO pieces in real life size and looks stunning on the wall.

A free digital version of the poster is also available. It’s exactly the same as the Digital LEGO Colors Poster, but in a much lower quality (it will not look that good printed out).