Classes were held in the local elementary school. Because the students had the summer off, we were able to [make] use of the cafeteria as a classroom, two students sitting at each of eleven large tables. Paul would go from desk to desk carrying a collapsible garden stool with him so that he could sit and talk to each student about his or her work. Each tête-à-tête went on as long as was necessary to set the student on the right track and was laced with stories from Paul’s vast career as they were appropriate to the issue at hand. When he worked with students, he poured his heart and soul into it.

Paul remained part of the core faculty of the Brissago program until it ended in 1996. It didn’t take long for him to be convinced that this kind of concentrated and intense interaction with individual students was the best way to teach graphic design. He tried to transplant the one-project/one-week arrangement to the Yale program but because of the academic and extracurricular demands placed on the students, it never quite worked.

— Philip Burton on Paul Rand, Paul Rand: Conversations with Students

Part of the fun in teaching is all the -related literature and films and songs and anecdotes one reads oneself to sleep with. The other part of the fun is vacuously imitating the not-so-important parts and hoping things unfold well. There is a txti in there somewhere—of all the ‘material’ on teaching, waiting to be put into HTML. Point being that nothing can replace this extended bakchodi with individuals (on their work), showing them related work, showing them seemingly unrelated texts that make sense, showing off some of one’s own work, etc.