Alessandro Segalini

The teacher must create an environment in which the student can learn — which is simple, direct and honest. A true life learning. You can’t push information into an unwilling brain. There’s no such thing as teaching. Only learning. Your style of leadership will be one of the most important choices you will make — the measure of control over who you are and what sort of character you embody. Focus on the things that make a difference and work on them as hard as you can. Be consistent in everything you do; in a quote from the Greek philosopher Plutarch, ‘The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted.’ I believe that compliance alone is not sufficient for outstanding performance. Blind obedience is not pleasurable nor does it produce a sense of accomplishment. […] If we give everyone we come in contact with the freedom to choose an outcome while encouraging the person to be aware of the responsibilities, then the individual will learn to make better choices, and if we earn trust and accept our responsibilities, then we take a giant step toward creating successful relationships. Removing responsibility and tightening control directly reduce the learning process. If we trust others because we have caused them to trust us we have completed the circle necessary for exemplary communication.

Designers must educate the public that design is about strategy, not decoration. However, such attempts are repeatedly undermined by a design world hooked on competitions and awards ceremonies that celebrate creativity instead of strategy results and sustainability.

In the past few decades, individuals have experienced dramatic changes in some of the most established dimensions of human life: time, space, matter, and individuality. Working across several time zones, traveling with relative ease between satellite maps and nanoscale images, gleefully drowning in information, acting fast in order to preserve some slow downtime, people cope daily with dozens of changes in scale. Minds adapt and acquire enough elasticity to be able to synthesize such abundance. One of design’s most fundamental tasks is to stand between revolutions and life, and to help people deal with change. Designers have coped with these displacements by contributing thoughtful concepts that can provide guidance and ease as science and technology evolve.

Students generally have very little idea of the world they are entering into, and their teachers – like parents — are viewed as beings who alternately guide and admonish; rarely are those teachers viewed as individuals or is their professional standing considered. It is usually only afterward, when young people encounter real-life situations in their chosen professions that they sometimes learn (if they are lucky) that they studied with one of the greats.

A good listener helps us overhear ourselves.

Nothing is “original.” Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery, celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to.

Design cannot be heard or read, it must be seen. Design is the structural link between the customers and the product. Content must be brought to the surface. And when a design is completed, it should seem natural and obvious. It should look like it is always been this way. And it should last.

People invent new machines and improve existing ones almost unconsciously, rather as a somnambulist will go walking in his sleep. The interesting puzzle in our times is that we so willingly sleepwalk through the process of reconstituting the conditions of human existence.

A visualization method is a systematic, rule-based, external, permanent, and graphic representation that depicts information in a way that is conducive to acquiring insights, developing an elaborate understanding, or communicating experiences.

Following a process is a critical factor in successfully designing and developing information. By following one, you have, at the least, a checklist of sorts that helps you make sure that you complete every task and, at the most, a guide to make sure that you address issues in the most logical sequence. By following a well-defined process and applying creative design and development techniques, you can design communication products in the most effective and efficient manner.