New York City has a way about it, an ability to enrapture wandering souls, journeymen, wide eyed hopefuls looking for something more. Last year Alicia Keys boasted that “its lights will inspire you” but really, it’s so much more. Though New York screams big with a capital B, the city’s fabric is made up of the little things; the corner vendor, the sea of yellow that fills the streets, the morning paper on a train ride across the bridge. And yes, there are lights too.

Acclaimed illustrator Christoph Niemann was once one of those wandering souls, moving to New York from his native Germany in 1997, looking to make it in America. And make it he did, his work  having been featured in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly and New York Times Magazine. He also fell in love with the city along the way. But after eleven years as a New Yorker, Niemann decided it was time for a change, and moved with his wife and two kids to Berlin.  In a blog he maintains for the New York Times called Abstract City, Niemann posted a series called “I Lego N.Y” in which he pays homage to his urban mistress by illuminating its many charms using Lego. The series was an explosive hit and has now reemerged as a book. We spoke to the illustrator about his whimsical tribute to the city that never sleeps.

If you love New York so much, why did you leave?
That’s the hardest question right at the start! There has not been a day that I have been fed up with, or even just indifferent about New York. All things considered it is probably still my favorite place in the world. I did feel though that in the long run I wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the city as much as I used to.

New York is the single most wonderful place to turn one’s energy and ideas into real projects. The one thing that the city doesn’t allow for enough is failure. There is so much change about to happen in my industry (editorial, publishing etc.). I felt I had to be more willing to make mistakes, in order to come up with new tricks (which I know I will have to). So we decided to shake things up and try out a new environment. Berlin seemed like a good place to do that.

Berlin is indeed an amazing city, and many contend that it’s usurped New York as the center of the universe. What does New York have that Berlin doesn’t?
The G-Train…?

What Berlin sometimes lacks is an equivalent of Wall Street. Everyone is so hip and progressive and fashionable. But if there is barely anybody out there who stands for a different, more conservative mindset, even a bunch of crazy 23 year old, environmentally conscious hat designers can seem a little reactionary and stale.

What I love most about this series, is that without the captions the work seems is so abstract, but add the words and I cant see the pieces as anything else. Was this the intention?
Absolutely! For me the ideal joke consists of the viewer/reader providing 98% of the idea, and the illustration just filling in that last tiny piece of the puzzle, that makes everything come together. Abstraction is a wonderful tool to make us aware of all those connections and associations that we have already stored in our heads.

Your work with Lego and even your illustrations are incredibly clever. Where do these ideas come from?
That’s an easy one: effort with a good dose of angst and desperation. I wish there was a secret, but it’s really just trying out a lot of different things, and having the stamina to throw out the 85% of ideas that I feel do not work.

The aesthetic of the series is incredibly simple, but I’d imagine the process of coming up with the pieces was very complex.
For this series my job was 15% Illustrator, 15% Art Director and 70% editor. The hardest part was to push the ideas to ever greater simplicity, but not to step over that very thin line that separates “simple” from “unintelligibly abstract”.

Why do you think your work with Lego has been embraced by so many people?

There are two things: one, people simply love legos. It’s one of the few toys that is as cool for a 3-year old as it is for a 7-year old. I guess the other element is that this series is not about showcasing how terribly smart I am. It’s about the viewer having fun with their inherent visual and cultural intelligence, that gets tickled with the images.

Were you worried that audiences wouldn’t get it at first, particularly non-New Yorkers?

I had conceived this more or less as an inside joke. So I wasn’t really worried, but I would have never dreamed that non-New Yorkers would embrace it to such an amazing extent.

One of the fascinating things about New York is that even when you only visit for a week, you can make it “your” place. There is no other city in the world that seems to be owned by no one and everybody at the same time. I guess that leads to a lot of people identifying very closely with the city in all it’s aspects, whether they have lived here 60 years or only visited for 10 days.

Your work is mostly illustration and graphic design. Do you see yourself working more with tangible materials after this?

The extremely tight deadlines, as well as the flexibility that my editorial work demands, doesn’t lend it self that much to this three dimensional work. But for the blog or similar projects, I would very much like to do more of these experiments.

It seems like living in a major city like New York or Berlin is crucial to your work. Why is that?

I don’t work for myself, I always work with an audience in mind (that may be a weakness and a strength). To get a sense of the audience, I need to be surrounded by it. Then again, maybe living in a big city is less crucial to my work than it is to my general happiness.

Your work has always been very fun, whimsical and some may argue, rooted in childhood. How did becoming a parent affect your work?

As far as my children’s books go— they certainly wouldn’t have happened without the inspiration I am getting from spending time with the kids. But with works like the lego series as well as other pieces, I try to use the light and playful approach merely as a visual Trojan horse to tell a more or less grown-up story. One thing has changed though: since I have kids I can lay on the floor for hours, playing with legos and wooden bricks and pretend that I am actually working.

*Want to win a copy of Niemann’s “I LEGO N.Y.” book for yourself? We have a bunch of copies to giveaway! All you have to do is click HERE to fill in our 2010 reader survey and you’ll be automatically entered into the giveaway!

-Daniel Barna