Dear Future Cross-Maker

Letter no. 2 Program Open Letter Dear Maker, I’m glad to hear that you’ll be joining the journey! Let’s explore the exercise regimen of cross-training as a means to make. I’ll be your Cross-Maker-in-Training Buddy, and I’ll walk you through what to expect and accompany you along the way. Together we’ll find out if cross-training can be applied as a method for learning through making by graphic designers. As you read on, you’ll be invited to try out the roles of kinesthetic and visual learners: an Athlete and a Graphic Designer. You can recombine and reconfigure their approaches in ways that contribute to your own creative processes, and by the end of your training, you’ll unleash another facet of the maker that you already are: the Cross-Maker! You’ll receive parts of the training that will be delivered to you in the form of letters. First, we’ll begin with warm-up and stretching sessions to unpack this metaphor of cross-training from the sports domain and apply it to a creative one. We’ll familiarize ourselves with the terms, then read stories about how an athlete and a graphic designer deal with plateaus and in their training routines. Then it’s the kick-off of the Cross-Making sessions! Each day, you’ll receive a suggestion for an exercise to try, along with entries from my DIYry/DIWOry to share my experiences related to that exercise, in case you need some inspiration or moral support. In the meantime, here’s the program overview: Session Program Role 1 Warm-Up Athlete 2 Stretching Graphic Designer 3 Cross-Making: Orientation Cross-Maker-in-Training 4 Exercises #1-6 5 Cool-Down Cross-Maker Don’t forget, this program is created for makers like us, so feel free to customize, modify, or hack it so that it not only matches your pace, needs, learning and making styles, but also sparks your curiosities! See you at warm-up! Your Cross-Maker-in-Training Buddy