Join us for an evening of sharing and conversation about the precision, process, and play that created A2Z: Learning Through LEGO® and Letterforms, a collaborative alphabet and letterpress publication. The program will include a presentation on how the project was devised and executed, featuring some exclusive behind the scenes stories.
Join us at the @uic.design , University of Illinois Chicago, on November 6 2025, 6:30PM, in the main auditorium area (RM1100).
This research project is currently on exhibition at the Design Museum of Chicago @designmuseumchi , and can be seen until January 11 2026.
CHICAGO—The Design Museum of Chicago, in collaboration with the University of Illinois Chicago, is excited to present A2Z: Learning through LEGO® and Letterforms exhibition from Oct 15, 2025 to January 11, 2026. The exhibition highlights the relationship between LEGO® bricks and typography through letterpress printing, exploring key questions in design pedagogy through a hands-on approach. It focuses on systematic thinking and collaborative practice in typographic design.
The PNCA Design Lecture Series welcomes in Amira Hegazy—Chicago-based multimodal designer + curator—to talk about her work + what moves her.
🗓️⏳ Tuesday, September 23 · 6:30 - 8pm
📍Pacific Northwest College of Art
The PNCA Design Lecture Series welcomes a broad range of creatives who are breaking expectations of what design can be and do in the world. To kick off our Fall 2025 series, we’re welcoming in Chicago-based designer and scholar Amira Hegazy.
Design is a powerful force to build community, interpersonal understanding, belonging, and cooperation. By learning about Chicago’s Typographic traditions and history through community-based participatory research, Amira Hegazy identified that behind the design, love is a major motivator and method in most of Chicago’s local design cultures.
In this talk, Amira will discuss Love as a method of design, a mode of influence, an aesthetic choice, and a commitment within her own practice.
Our 2025-26 Design Lecture Series explores, loosely, the theme of neighborhoods, and Amira’s practice is a thoughtful lens to begin the season. We invite you to take a closer look at the communities around you, whether mapped by shared interests or geographies, in all their wild variation: the intersections between us, the ways we differ, and how design builds connection.
#artandaboutpdx #artanddesign #artisttalk #pnca #portlandartscene
The complete alphabet was published in a limited numbered edition of 100, to be distributed amongst the participants and institutions that can use this as a teaching/learning material. There are some extra loose sets and individual letterforms for those who are interested, so you can always reach out if you're looking for anything specific. The whole project is documented and is shared online for free, including all templates and resources (link in bio).
In order to build a case for this edition, we started by laser cutting the paper, scored each sheet manually (with a jig custom made for it), and brought them to @spudnikpress to be printed. At Spudnik you can find a Vandercook SP-25, a press that was big enough for this task. Super thankful for their enthusiasm and support.
The case was printed in two passes: one silver layer with a square flat acrylic sheet, a photopolymer plate (for the spine) and an inverted baseplate. The second layer was printed in black, imprinting the @lego baseplate straight into the front cover. If you look closer you can see the inverted logos across the surface.
After a lot of hours folding and placing magnets by hand (thanks @shannonkmorrissey for the hard work!), these cases were born. Hope they can help preserving this project for years to come.
The printing is completed—now onto some data (because who doesn't love data).
Took us around 9,000 bricks to print the complete alphabet (+- whatever ones got broken and lost in the way), almost 11,000 sheets of paper, and more than 27,000 passes (manually operated) on the press. The estimated hours were just that, estimated. Between @amirror , @shannonkmorrissey and I, for sure over 400+ were needed. The production of this alphabet was a collaborative effort, and it should be recognized as so:
I am proud of the @uic.design community: faculty, students, and administration, that always supported and provided everything needed for this project to be a success. It's a celebration of what academia should be: a space for experimentation, learning and collaboration.
This project would not have been possible without the precious help and care from two very special people. @amirror and @shannonkmorrissey were instrumental for the production of this alphabet, and I am incredibly thankful for their collaboration and friendship. This was a shared experience that I will cherish for years to come, and whose often invisible labor should be seen and valued.
Amira Hegazy began working on A2Z as a production advisor in 2023 as the initial concepts were still forming. During this time she helped me consider the necessary elements of high volume physical production. She was formally brought into the work as the publisher in Fall 2024. As the master printer and material specialist, she ensured the elements of the letterpress process maintained a high quality and honored the visual intricacies of the digital designs. Beyond the technical elements of letterpress printing, Amira took on the role of mentor to Shannon Morrissey who learned letterpress printing through this project.
Shannon Morrissey was the Graduate Research Assistant on A2Z. Through this process she learned letterpress printing under the direction of Amira and was immersed in conversations around digital to physical output as well as project management with me. Over the four months of her assistantship, she learned all of the technical elements of printing on a Vandercook Proof Press and lent this new expertise to produce A2Z. She took part in every element of the production, and without her contribution, the project would have taken many more months to complete.
Could not have asked for a better team, please go check their work!
🖤🤍
Piece by piece by piece. Typesetting reminds me how far I’ve come since I began learning Letterpress.
I love coming back to Virginia every summer and working with the folks at @rarebookschool
I started working here ten years ago, learning the history of the book through a hands on masterclass in print history with their amazing collection of historic presses and rare materials. Every year I’ve been able to spend time honing the traditional side of my print practice and pass on the craft to scholars and peers.
Enjoy the typesetting asmr.
#asmr #print #rarebooks #letterpress #books
If one woman works on four presses, eleven projects, in six months, with thousands of legos, two computers, one tablet, one perfect pencil, 8 different rulers, two T squares, one brother, one drill, two hundred screws, two assistants, and the best friends in the world, how many dreams can she accomplish?
Life lately has felt like a series of algebraic word problems. Everything approaching an apex. I used trigonometry for the first time in 12 years to calculate the hight of a triangle. Taught one assistant how to divide fractions, and the other how to adjust a press to fractions of a millimeter. It feels good to do work that has a quantifiable solution. To feel so many things coming in register with one another. Working toward a golden equation for success, joy, balance.
Big things coming. I’m excited to share some of the projects I’ve been working on soon!
