Creative Bulletin n.109
This past week we enjoyed some time off during the weekend in Bologna with some friends. We went to FICO (some sort of a food Jurassic Park), but since Sefirot is always on our mind, when we saw this neon sign, we literally lit up (😂). We want something like this that says “Creative Tools”, for our stand at the Book Fair. Wouldn’t it be so cool?
That’s why we ask: do you know anyone who makes signs like this? Can you shoot a name our way? 🙏
🦊🦊🦊 What we’ve been up to this week
- Matteo finished the first draft of BAD’s booklet. When Andrea read it (he kind of glanced at it, he’ll start focusing on it in the next few days) he felt satisfaction and amazement which doesn’t happen often to him. He felt like the first time he saw Fabula for Kids’ illustrations. That’s when he knows we’re on the right track! It’ll be a dense booklet and he can’t wait to create an index and a glossary for it 🤗
- We met with our accountants to find a more effective system to pay the VAT tax that can apply to publishers. It was the same ol’ headache but it is quite satisfying to optimize those details.
🍏🍏🍏 A methodology we are yet to find
In the past, we talked extensively about coming up with a valid training course. The educational world is ever present in our lives: Andrea is also a high school teacher, we developed a tool for the European Training Foundation, Matteo is about to teach a class on Design in college. Just last week we were jolting down some ideas for an intùiti course.
At the same time, we feel the need to find a different teaching approach from what we’ve experienced in the past, something that doesn’t feel improvised and that can follow set principles. We need a methodology indeed. At the end of the day it’s the same need we have when writing booklets for our products.
🐈🐈🐈 What we’ve learned
Or maybe we should ask: what have we learned in our lives? What are the lessons that resonated the most?
Most likely our answer will match with your answer: we learned by doing and by copying. We learned from real life examples, not just from theory. Unfortunately, quite often, courses, school and university are not enough. Topics are often discussed in an unrealistic way or knowledge is “pre-digested” and simplified.
Matteo is currently reading a book by Munari and he is outraged by the fact that none of his teachers at college forced him to read those books. It would have been so useful, Munari pushes you to look at the real world with new eyes. We would love to create a series of lectures where we force students to read Munari, but most of all we want to incite them to do, do, do.
🌈 Takeaway: teach what you know
To teach is a great responsibility, and we should remember to do it well. It also means that we should always look into what we, as teachers, actually know. We would love to teach only what we really know. It might sound obvious, but we’re not sure that many teachers see it this way.
That’s why in BAD, when the time came to give some business examples, we used our own experience with Fabula, a tool that we know exists. It wouldn’t have made any sense to use Apple as an example, since none of us have ever worked there, or a made-up company that sells avocado in Perù 🥑
With ❤️,
Matteo and Andrea
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