The ability to generate a custom label for almost any LEGO part is the culmination of a massive 12-month project!

Looking back, my main reason for creating the LEGO Parts Guide in the first place was to create a foundation of robust parts data which I could eventually use to automate the process of creating new labels. It took longer than I had hoped to launch this feature, but it’s finally here!

How it works?

With the legacy LEGO Brick Labels collection, you downloaded a large file containing tons of label files. Each file contained labels for around 8 different parts which you could print as a single long strip, or you could manually copy/paste the one label you needed to a new file for printing. This approach was pretty efficient if you needed all of the labels, but frustrating when you needed just one label.

The legacy LEGO Brick Labels required you to download a folder containing all of the label files.

The new system is optimized for printing individual labels — Just browse or search for the part you need, download, and print it! This is ideal for people with growing collections that only need to print a few new labels when parting out a set that contains parts which are new to their collection.

There’s a link to download a label on the page for each part.

In practice, this change doubled the number of labels available overnight. The legacy LEGO Brick Labels collection included about 1800 labels, and I currently have custom images for about 3500 parts!

There are three ‘tiers’ of parts:

1. Parts already added to LEGO Parts Guide – These parts should have excellent labels which will be very similar to how they appeared in the legacy LEGO Brick Labels collection.
   There are already 375 new labels that have custom names/images and I plan to add many more!
2. Parts with custom images that have not been added to LEGO Parts Guide yet – You can still learn more about these parts using pages automatically generated using data from Rebrickable, BrickLink, Brickset, and LDraw. Since these parts have custom images, I decided to allow you to print a label even though the part name may not be consistent with other labels.
   The part name matches the name used on Rebrickable, which is sometimes appropriate for a label and sometimes far too long. (You can always edit the name within Brother P-Touch application before printing it.)
3. Parts without custom images – Many obscure parts do not have custom images because I haven’t created one yet or because a 3d model of the part is not available in LDraw. I do not offer labels for these parts because they are not comparable to the quality I expect of the LEGO Brick Labels collection.

This release also includes improvements to the pages where you browse parts by category. I updated the ‘label’ view to match the style of printable labels — using two lines for the part name and a slightly larger part image. (Splitting long names in half reduces the width for many parts, allowing me to show about the same number of parts per page while showing larger images.)

Refined the ‘label’ view to match the three-line styling of printed labels.

I also made a substantial upgrade to the ‘table’ view which shows a lot more info about each part. This styling matches how parts are displayed on the Most Common LEGO Parts.

Significant improvement to ‘table’ view.

Looking Back

I started working on the LEGO Parts Guide in early January and launched the first version on February 21. This initial release included almost every part in the LEGO Brick Labels collection because I wanted to offer a seamless transition from the old system to the new one.

In March, I added the ability to browse the Most Common LEGO Parts, which uses inventory data from Rebrickable to calculate the most common parts from the past 5 years, or all-time. In addition to browsing long lists of part sorted by their rankings, I created a compact table of data showing each part’s popularity on multiple dimensions including the hybrid ranking that I prefer, as well as sorting by most parts, sets, or colors.

In March, I added a table of statistics which is shown for every part.

This was followed by many months of bugfixing and data entry. Instead of limiting the experience to parts which had been fully entered into my database, in August I started showing a custom page even for those parts which haven’t been added yet. It uses data from Rebrickable, Brickset/LEGO, BrickLink, and LDraw to create a custom view based on the assumption that the part names are usually the same across all four of those sites.

I continued creating a lot more custom images and adding parts to the database through the fall. This allowed me to expand The Most Common LEGO Parts galleries to show the top 2000 parts because I had enough part images to give a good experience. For those parts that do not have a custom image, I started showing a custom ‘missing part’ icon because not trying to load images that don’t exist causes pages to load more quickly.

Looking Forward

I am excited that my continued efforts to improve the database and generate custom images will now improve the experience across all three experiences: The LEGO Parts Guide, The Most Common LEGO Parts, and adding new parts to the LEGO Brick Labels collection.

That’s why I plan to refine my backend tools int he coming weeks to make it easier to add parts to the guide, sort them nicely within each category, and identify errors in the dataset. I’m also eager to ensure that the 2000 top-ranked parts in both the Current and All Time lists have been added to the database so that they have consistent part names, better labels, and appear in the right category. (This will be especially helpful for the many people who have asked for labels for vintage parts throughout the years.)

I am also excited to continue improving the overall user experience by improving the search experience, showing additional information on pages about each part, and by listening to users to hear what you need to make the LEGO Parts Guide and LEGO Brick Labels even better!

Supporting LEGO Brick Labels and The LEGO Parts Guide!

It is very important that I acknowledge the many patrons who have provided financial support, beta testing, feedback, and a ton of motivation to make this moment possible!

Thank you to the following patrons:

Doug Raas, Mark Gruen, Peter Middelkoop, Marci Hollingsworth, Dudley G Henderson, Verena Weaver, Sarah DePriest, Larry Bak, Karl Reinsch, Pam Stone, Kenneth Simons, Marc Brunner, Jim Winslett, Yael K. Miller, Dave Schefcik (BrickNerd.com), Joshua Balthrop, Paul Osentowski, Greg, G Cohen, William, LeAnna T, Linda M, Theresa Robeson, Fred McCassey, ClikClackBrick, Brian Lansing, BK (bkstudios.com), Jacky Dust, Joseph & Dana Onifer, David Bédard-Barrette, Mark Lange, Fabio Eduardo Bomfim De Souza, Ed Bartkus, Derek Adair, Rob Burnett, Anna Kenneke, Kristina Corey, Jay McClure, Carlo Fornasari, Thomas Wolters, Roshena Shetler, Ben Wells, Barbara McCann, Charles Aldarondo, Emil Harris, Catherine Rydberg, Tom Boyd, Karl, Stacey Edwards, Valentino, John E. Kay, tedgarb, Erich Nielsen, Ewan Tinitali, Joshua Chase, Marie Olsson, Noel Caraballo, Matt Menzenski, Bruce Bebow, Josh Black, Katherine Shaw, Yusuf Essack, Nicola Rippon, Shel L Strickland, A Lipson, Husnah Jamaludin, Robert Johnjock, Briar, Amy Gembala, KingAirNeal, John, Nancy Johnson, Musicon, Elizabeth Schneider, Corey Schofield, Mike Mozingo, Michael Dean, Jeremy Warner, Chris, Michael Hudson, Kevin ONeil, Mark Bakunas, Kevin Denlinger, Neal Alders, Jared Clark, Wendry Dreier, Antonio Serra, Christopher P Rahaim, Warren Elsmore, Christopher Kokinos, Claudia Schaible, Tony Macartney, RR Cady, Coffee, Gerald Aungst, Angela, Les Doti, Ricardo Molina, Mark Anderson, YouBrick, Susan Bores, Andrew, Thomas Kooi, Torleif Småback, Tone Knee, Timothy Kemperle, Ron Redelijkheid, Rachel Stoehr, Yves Guyaux, Dr_Paul, Robert, Michi.

If you are able to make a donation to support this project, please visit patreon.com to subscribe!

Patrons get behind-the-scenes insights into the making of LEGO Brick Labels and the LEGO Parts Guide. It has been a great pleasure to share a more intimate look at the creative process with them. Patrons can also request new labels which I am happy to create — especially now that I’ve automated part of the process!