At the heart of design is the act of creating something from nothing — identifying an unmet need, designing a model that serves it, and bringing that something to life through thoughtful execution.
Over the past several months, I’ve been quietly designing a new business. It’s called BRICKA — a new independent magazine for adult fans of LEGO® (AFOLs), exploring the culture, creativity, and business of brick building. BRICKA is The Atlantic meets Dwell for the world of brick building — art/design journalism, through a different lens.
The Cultural Opportunity
Across the world, millions of adults are rediscovering creativity through brick building. What began as a childhood pastime has evolved into a cultural movement — from LEGO Masters on TV, to conventions that draw thousands, to YouTube creators with millions of subscribers.
LEGO Group’s “Adults Welcome” Campaign from 2020
AFOLs (Adult Fans of LEGO) are architects, artists, and storytellers working in a unique medium — modular, constrained, and infinitely expressive. Yet despite the community’s sophistication, there hasn’t been a publication that treats brick building with the same editorial seriousness and design sensibility as architecture or art.
That’s the opportunity I see: to design a brand and platform that elevates brick culture — not as hobbyist entertainment, but as a form of creative practice and cultural expression.
Why a Magazine? Why Now?
I live a digital life, but I keep finding myself gravitating back to the physical world: hikes with my family, building with LEGO, and reading magazines. In an era of digital noise, print is focus.
A magazine offers a bounded, intentional experience — something you can hold, pause with, and reflect on. It creates space for deep storytelling, design craft, and visual immersion — but it’s more than just a point in time. Unlike a book, a magazine is a story that continues with each issue — each issue is a more rapid, specific response to the context around it.
So the print magazine will be our flagship product, but this isn’t nostalgia for magazines — it’s about using editorial design as a modern product model. BRICKA will be a multi-platform experience, featuring digital articles on the web and a mobile app. And who knows what the future will hold? If you’re familiar with my work on the Design Museum, you can imagine a community layer connecting readers, builders, and creative partners — an event and content ecosystem that can evolve into experiences, partnerships, and educational opportunities. How long till the first BRICKA exhibition?
Designing From Values
Every venture I’ve built is rooted in creativity and community. With Design Museum Boston, that meant designing access — bringing design into public spaces, making it visible and participatory. With BRICKA, it means designing belonging.
I want readers to feel part of a cultural movement — a creative identity that sits between design, art, and play. I want every issue to feel like a creative retreat: beautiful photography, honest storytelling, and the kind of thoughtful reflection you rarely find in our algorithm-curated social feeds.
When you build with LEGO, you enter a flow state, brick by brick — I aim to transport readers into that same sense of flow, word by word.
The Business Design of BRICKA
BRICKA is also a business design experiment — a live case study in designing a lean, creator-driven media company from the ground up.
A few of the principles guiding me:
Vertical focus: Serve a distinct, passionate niche (Adult Fans of LEGO) with a high-value, premium product.
Lean prototyping: Start with Issue 1 — a proof of concept designed and self-funded by me to signal the market before scaling.
Community-driven growth: Leverage direct engagement, collaborations, and use Kickstarter to grow.
Multi-channel monetization: Subscription first, with layered revenue from partnerships, events, and limited-edition products.
Even in a saturated media landscape, clarity of purpose remains a differentiator and a competitive advantage.
My Why
My first LEGO set was Forestmen’s River Fortress. I built it on a blue rug in my parents’ basement — I even cut green poster-board “islands” so my forest minifigs could sail between castles.
That same sense of curiosity and form exploration led me into design — from industrial designer at Bose, to founding Design Museum Boston, to launching Design Museum Magazine. Now I’m bringing all of that experience — storytelling, design, entrepreneurship — together in BRICKA. Because brick building, to me, is more than play — it’s a lens for creativity, systems thinking, math, structure, and beauty.
I still build! To me, it’s an escape, a chance to express myself and be creative — it’s a way for me to still be a product designer in a way, though the means of production are quite different.
One of my latest MOCs (My Own Creation)
Where We Are With BRICKA
I’m working hard on Issue 1, and it’s coming together beautifully. The plan is to launch in early December 2025. I’m having amazing conversations with brick-building artists and designers like Raymond Girard (known as Pen and Brick on Instagram) — Raymond builds incredible city-like towers and structures that are both abstract and geometric, as well as whimsical and even utopian.
Raymond Girard
I interviewed Karsten Lund, the co-founder and creative director at Light Brick Studio, makers of the new LEGO Voyagers video game, about creating a game where you actually control a LEGO brick — and the design, trial and error, and user testing that were required to make it a delightful experience.
Light Brick Studio’s LEGO Voyagers
Then there’s Kelly Bartlett, a LEGO artist in Portland, Oregon, who competed on LEGO Masters and has pieces in the LEGO House Gallery in Denmark.
Kelly Bartlett
BRICKA will share their stories, showcase their work, and inspire brick-building artists and designers worldwide.
Business Design Lessons from Building BRICKA
With BRICKA — and as always — I’m practicing business design and learning along the way. Some early approaches that have allowed me to validate the business idea quickly and move with speed and confidence:
Talk to potential customers early — and keep talking. I’ve spoken with around twenty potential readers (so far), builders, and creative partners. It’s not statistically significant, but it’s been immensely valuable. Those conversations have accelerated my clarity, refined my audience, and shaped everything from tone to pricing. Business is about people — and I’ll keep having those conversations as I grow this brand.
Make it real as fast as possible. I could have spent months imagining what BRICKA could be. Instead, I’m making a prototype — or, let’s call it a pilot: Issue 1. It’s a prototype in print — a test of brand, audience, operations, and voice all at once. The only way to find direction is to build something real, put it into the world, and gather signals about where to go next.
Build in public. BRICKA isn’t just a magazine — it’s a journey. By sharing the process as I go, from interviews to prototypes, I’m building both an audience and a sense of shared ownership. Transparency fosters trust, and trust in turn builds community. I hope you’ll continue on this journey with me!
Join Me in Building BRICKA
The site is live at brickamag.com; you can become a founding subscriber here.
Follow along as I build this business, brick by brick, on Instagram @brickamag.
And if you have thoughts — story ideas, creative collaborations, or just encouragement — I’d love to hear from you,
— Sam
Sam Aquillano is an entrepreneur, design leader, writer, and founder of Design Museum Everywhere. This post was originally published in Sam’s twice-monthly newsletter for the creative-business-curious, Business Design School. Check out Sam’s book, Adventures in Disruption: How to Start, Survive, and Succeed as a Creative Entrepreneur.
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