A new print magazine celebrates creativity of adult fans of Legos

Sam Aquillano’s home in Acton, Massachusetts, is a shrine to his love of Legos. On the first floor is a playroom for his four kids, ages 1, 3, 6 and 8, equipped with a homemade Lego table. He proudly pointed to a small gray Lego spaceship he recently made for his 3-year-old.

“ I've built so many things for them over the years,” Aquillano said. “They don't last, but that's where I have to be OK with like, it's all for them.”

“Well, this is for them,” he said, gesturing at the kid’s playroom. “The upstairs is for me.”

Upstairs is where Aquillano’s Lego sanctuary and home office is, off limits to his kids. There is a 6,000 piece structure of the Star Wars Razor Crest, the Hulkbuster from Iron Man and a realistic Polaroid camera. These sorts of complex structures took Aquillano weeks to build.

The projects remind him of the years spent in his childhood basement building Lego castles. It was time well-spent. He said those castles eventually inspired his career as a professional designer.

“As soon as you start building with Lego, the shackles are off your brain. Right? You're like, anything's possible,” said Aquillano, who works as a design director at a financial services firm.

One of his favorite builds hangs on the back wall. A white frame outlines a Lego-made collection of sunflowers and leaves made to look like a living plant wall.

“ It is art,” Aquillano said.

Aquillano’s passion for Legos as an art form drove him to create a new, independent magazine: Bricka. The first issue printed this month. It contains profiles of Lego artists, designs from around the world and fantastical Lego photography.

The magazine’s target audience is “adult fans of Legos,” who often go by the shorthand AFOLs. Adults are a growing sales target of the toy industry, which includes Legos. According to a 2025 Circana report, which measures consumer habits, growth in toy sales to adults is outpacing the growth of toy sales to children.

Aquillano came up with the idea for Bricka on vacation. He was with his children at a Lego store where he realized there were more adults than kids there browsing. Aquillano also knew about the thriving AFOL community since he followed Lego artists on social media and saw AFOL in-person events. Still, he believed brick-building needed a different form of recognition.

“I don’t think anyone thought of these artists as worthy of this level of art journalism,” Aquillano said.

Aquillano considers Bricka a celebration of brick artist’s creativity and sophistication. The profiles include Lego hobbyists as well as Lego artists who’ve been commissioned to build custom sets.

“We’re a bunch of adults playing with this toy,” Aquillano said. “But we are elevating it to this next level.”