This week was our last week together and it was so bitter sweet! I can’t believe that I have to say goodbye to everyone, but I am also very excited to get home and share all of my stories about my adventures in Italy with my family. My last trip with my design family was to Treviso a four-hour bus ride from Milan. We visited the Tipoteca Italiana, a hands on museum that showed us about letter pressing and the process it took to print a book or a newspaper for many centuries before the invention of computers and modern printers. I have been doing calligraphy for about five years, so I was just like a kid in a candy store at the museum seeing all of the different fonts that they had. At the museum, we got to make a family poster. We decided to highlight the name of our program, the date of our program, and the names of our favorite designers on our family poster. I was so shocked that it took us an hour and a half to produce the final poster. We first had to come up with an idea that everyone agreed with then, we had to choose the ink colors making sure that the ink colors went well with the color of the paper we used. The most time consuming part of the entire process was lining up the individual letters, which had different fonts, so that all the designer names fit correctly on our poster. I learned that the art of letterpress technique has rapidly been decreasing in recent decades because of new and faster technology. This makes me very upset because letter press books and newspapers last much longer then books today, because of the ink and paper used. This museum visit was truly amazing I was so thankful for the staff for being so patient us sixteen girls and our million different opinions!
Although my last morning in Italy started off very stressful, once I stepped into Fabrica, a research center in Treviso, Italy, that offers young people (Under the age of 25) the opportunity to grow and explore their talents, I immediately forgot about all of my stress! I was able to enjoy the works of talented students from all around the word. The young students of Fabrica have all been given a one year scholarships to come stay in Treviso to work on projects that will help them perfect their crafts. Unlike many design/art schools around the world, Fabrica does not teach its students in a classroom. The students learn through the different projects that they developed throughout the year. One of the projects that really stood out to me at Fabrica the book “Iranian Living Room”. This book is a “collective visual tale of fifteen young Iranian photographers” who welcomed the world into their living rooms (Fabrica.it). I was so excited about this book because even in a little town in Italy, I saw a piece of my culture and background being represented. As we took a tour around Fabrica, it was so interesting to see how all sixteen of us were able to connect with at least one piece of art that a student had created.