For many of us playing with LEGO was an essential part of childhood—the bricks from which we learned to build and manifest our creative selves. And for millions of users the joy of LEGO carries on well into adulthood, where the builds become more detailed and complex, but the need for a creative outlet is just as essential. Working with Chronicle Books we designed a series of publications for adult fans of LEGO (aka AFOLs). These publications asked us to work within LEGO’s brand guidelines while contributing our own graphic language to the work.

Build Every Day, by LEGO Master Model Builder Alec Posta, presents a series of prompts and a maker philosophy to inspire builders as they unlock their creativity. For the book we created a series of 22 typographic illustrations — one for each of the spreads that open each prompt. While the illustrations were digital, they still were required to reflect the reality of LEGO in that each illustration had to be buildable in real life and adhere to the actual proportions and colors of LEGO bricks.

 

LEGO Heroes demonstrates some of the innovate ways LEGO bricks have been made inclusive or hacked for alternate uses. These include braille LEGOs for the blind, as a street art material, to facilitate adjustable multi-tonal guitars, and bricks used to create improvised wheelchair ramps in a historic German village. Heroes challenges the idea that LEGOs are merely a toy and displays how the modular bricks are a sturdy and accessible building material for a wealth of applications.