Tag: lego

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Y turned nine at the end of May, which we celebrated with a trip to Lego House and Lego Land in Billund, Denmark as it coincided with Y having a few days off from school. But it wasn’t the only Lego related fun we organised around her birthday party. Yesterday with 5 invited friends we visited Roy Scholten‘s workshop at the Hilversum graphics center, where the group tried their hand on Lego printing.

Using flat Lego pieces you create a design, and then ink them up and put them under a press. Next to the 6 kids we were 3 parents, and we all had a lot of fun. When it was time to stop and clean up (before heading home for a small mountain of pancakes for dinner) no one really wanted to quit. I was impressed with how this little group of 8-9yr olds worked with abstract forms, experimented with colors etc, and stayed focused the full time without needing much aid or prompting.


Roy Scholten providing instructions to the group.


Searching for Lego pieces for our designs


A few iterations I made.

I originally met Roy during the pandemic in a conversation about personal knowledge management, and appreciated his bird prints made using Lego. We since acquired a few. Our friend Peter also uses a letterpress, and after making introductions, to my delight came to visit from Canada with his partner L to work with Roy. Yesterday some of their production together still adorned the walls of Roy’s atelier.


Lining up several iterations of my ‘river’ print.

You can book his workshops (and by other members of their collective) for company / team outings, or for training, as well as birthday parties. E has done a training with Roy, and we also gave her mother a workshop with friends for her 80th earlier this year. See Grafisch Atelier Hilversum’s website.


The two prints I like best. At the top one I retro actively dubbed ‘soccer player heading a ball’, that reminds me of De Zaaier by Theo van Doesburg we recently saw in the Drachten DaDa museum. Below the ‘river’, where I flipped the paper 180 degrees before printing again. The result of a much lighter blue second river course reminds me of how old river meanders stay visible as oxbow lakes in the landscape when the river bed has moved on.

Y turned nine this week. Part of celebrating that is visiting Legoland and Lego House in Billund.

Especially Lego House was a lot of fun, spending a full day building stuff in a relaxed and not overly crowded environment. You can leave the venue for lunch or a walk outside and re-enter again.


Y climbing a huge Lego brick in front of Lego House


Lego mosaic image of us three at Lego House

A few weeks ago in Haarlem, we came across Brikkon in a toy store. Basically they’re wooden templates, laser cutted so that the edges fit with Lego bricks. You can add bricks to e.g. a wooden tree, building a treehut, or adding walls to a tower to create a castle. They looked like fun, so we bought one for Y as a gift for the start of the new school year.

“The table is too small!” the little one says. “Not everyone can fit round it! Can you help me?”. Thus I helped to put together a bigger table, so she could also seat her Playmobil figures around the Lego table. I like her thinking.

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We see and think differently with our hands than with our eyes and heads. Whenever we make something tangible it has the potential to change our perspective.

This became tangible again for me last December when I participated in Wiro Kuiper’s ‘Lego serious play’ workshop. Handling lego stones, seeing something take shape in your hands, involves a different part of your brain while thinking on questions like “what is it that I do for clients?” as depicted in the pic below. (Add your guess as to what it means in the comments 😉 )


What I do for clients, @ lego serious play workshop

Since that workshop I have been musing about how ‘making something tangible’ could play a role in more of my work situations. Without much progress.

Tangible statistics, MAKE.opendata.ch

Recently we acquired a 3D printer at home. Previously I have encountered 3d printing ear hangers from visualized statistics based on open data (shown above), and I discussed that idea with Elmine. She, for a little side project of her, printed the two items below.

Elmine’s 3d printed statistics

They are both printed statistics: the small one is the number of Germans in the Dutch border region, and the bigger one the number of Dutch in the German border region (data source). Each by itself does not mean much to me. But in combination they are very interesting again: they make differences in amount tangible. You can feel the difference when you take the objects in your hands. Tangible infographics as it were.

Where could I apply that? And also, how to overcome my reluctance to make things tangible like this early / quickly as part of my own exploration (I tend to keep everything in text or in my head)?