[Update: Lego-ify maps to your heart’s content here]

I really liked the charming simplicity and retro vibes of this set of lego-ified works of art, by Geoffroy Amelot. One of those common instances where I wish I’d thought of it.

I especially liked this Lego Vincent.

So I tried it out on the same portrait of Vincent. Ok, doable! Looks like something I might step on in the dark.

Naturally, I imagined what a map might look like as a set of Lego bricks. So here is my quick and dirty take at lego-ifying the Great Lakes. I like it! Go maps! My family and I live in stud J-11.

And the Mediterranean. My wife Danielle’s family comes from stud O-8.

Here’s one of Cape Cod and the Islands. My son Bear was born at stud F-16.

And, while we’re lego-ifying isles, here’s one of Great Britain. I’ve not yet visited any of these studs. Also, I didn’t think I’d type that particular sequence of words today.

Relatedly, Ken Field (who hails from stud K-14 I think) made this cool 3D Lego map in CityEngine, which, given the context, of course bears mentioning.

How-To

Five steps -mega easy. In the time it will take me to type this (five minutes), you could have made two and a half lego-ified maps.

Take a screenshot of a beautiful map or satellite image. It’s not hard -pretty much all satellite images are beautiful.
Scale it down to 16 or so pixels wide (one pixel for however many Lego-ish studs you want it to end up being).
In your graphic design program, zoom in, take a screenshot, zoom back out to 100%, and paste the screenshot. Then tweak the screenshot size so each “pixel” cell is 30×30 pixels.
Boost the contrast and saturation.
Paste in this little lego-ish stud (right-click and save link as) graphic every 30 pixels. It says “LAND” instead of “LEGO” so you can rest easy tonight.

Don’t forget to clean up after you’re done. And have fun prying all those little 1×1 lego studs off the baseplate later. You’ll probably have to bend it a little, get your fingernail under them.

Alternatively, you can visit this site and crank out all the lego-ified maps you want, where Jinnan Zhang has built a robot to do the Lefo-ification for you.

Additionally, for the more interactively-inclined among you, Yan Cabon has created a dynamic basemap Lego-ifier, which you can peruse to your heart’s content.

That is all. John