Lego Illustration

It may not come up much on a Lego blog, but I have a degree in graphic design and a lot of practice in illustration; both of those skills were called on by a franchise of the excellent Bricks & Minifigs shop that was planning to open nearby. They wanted to emphasize the history and location of the city they were going to be doing business in, and just happened to have two bathrooms with large blank walls.

They commissioned me to design an illustration for each, to be printed out as giant stickers, ideally in time to be part of their grand opening. The owners wanted one to show a view of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, with Gold Rush-era details, while the other would be of modern Sacramento. To that end, I worked out the following sketches, which were approved:

My contribution to their idea was stylistic: combining the mosaic backgrounds of the "Tales of the Space Age" set, with foregrounds that draw from the stylization used in the Architecture line's cityscape models. Both images would be contained in a frame with studs facing out to contrast with the studs-up "builds" of the scenery. And really that was the biggest constraint I gave myself: to design each image so it could actually be built out of Legos, with no fudging or cheating.

I did a lot of research—in terms of the look and feel, the locations to be depicted, and various build techniques to utilize—and spent a great deal of effort in developing a palette of accurate colors and brick shapes in Inkscape to build my images from. I even took into account the placing of each image to ensure that the subtle highlights and shadows I worked into the bricks would match the rooms they were going in.

 

Then began the work of copying, pasting, placing, moving, and recoloring. Just as with a real build, I made sure to alternate placement (as though the wall of sky bricks would need to hold itself up) and avoid confusing tangents. There are some SNOT elements (like the hot air balloon and some of the buildings), and there is also an expectation that such a build would be made of layers—the foreground hillside in front of the train trestle and the quay on the near side of the river—with forced perspective adding to a feeling of depth in what might otherwise be a flat diorama. I chose to use Technic liftarms for the bridges and the old "waffle fry" style trees to keep the images from being just a succession of rectangles.

 

 

The end result was duly provided to the store owners and they were able to get it printed up in time for the grand opening, Saturday Jul 26, 2025. I think they look great (and as an added bonus, if they ever get damaged they can simply be re-printed), and the grand opening was a huge success!

I also went over there often to help with assembling and verifying used sets and even sorting old pieces to be cleaned. The owners are really working hard to foster a sense of community and providing a space for people to gather—not just to buy Legos, but also to share the joy of building and the fun of sharing it with others. I was even interviewed by one of the local news channels leading up to the big day, where I got to expound briefly on the infinite possibilities inherent to Legos. The local Lego User Group (LUG) was there, as was the designer of the Cullen House and his sister—both of whom were on Season 5 of the Lego Masters show—who were great to talk to.

 

Who knows, maybe some day I'll have a design go big on Ideas or Bricklink and sign some boxes of my own. Until then I'll keep building, keep designing, and keep enjoying Legos!

You can see this and some of my other graphic design and illustration work at my portfolio here.

And if you're in the area you can visit them in person, and get some great deals on excellent Legos from an amazing crew!