Greetings, Weird of me to have two posts so close together, but I wanted to share with everyone the event I did this past Thursday at Ideo. My friend Michelle works there and invited me to come over and teach bookbinding for one hour. I thought, "wait, what company allows their employees to do something fun from 4-5 on a Thursday afternoon."
Quick segue - some of you know my employment history and may laugh, but whatever. My experience of working anywhere for anyone is this paternalistic, top-down, whip-cracking, dreadfully tedious and boring, or some combination of all of that. There were times where I didn't even feel like a human being. There have been some exceptions and I have made some nice friends in these work environments. Ultimately though, I decided to work for myself where I can kind of escape some of that. My human spirit just can't cope with even one of those elements.
BUT, at this place, they often have a creative hour on a Thursday afternoon for employees to sit, hang-out, and be engaged together in something besides the work at hand. Does it make them happier, more productive - I hope so because there were a nice group of people and made some nice books. We used watercolor paper and paint to make our covers with block stamps to add embellishments. Here is one example in process.
And an example of a finished pamphlet book.
We then turned our hand to the Japanese, 4-hole side sewn book. The stitching on this was harder to teach than I thought it would be, but it all worked out.
One of the most fun pictures I caught was an image of people happily engaged in making. They do look really content.
The event was only supposed to be an hour, but everyone was having such a good time that we went over to about 5:30. The end result was about 24 new books in the world.
It was a lot of fun and maybe I'll get to do it again some day.