Is play important to how people learn and create?
Kelli Anderson—a paper engineer and pop-up book author who specializes in transforming an ordinary, everyday material such as paper, into interactive experiments people of all ages can partake in strives to answer this question through her work. She is a two-time Cooper Hewitt National Design Award nominee, a TED speaker, and a 2025 Eames Institute honoree. Her creations include, but are not limited to: “Tinybop Human Body app,” “This Book is a Camera,” “This Book is a Planetarium,” and “Alphabet in Motion.”
The Department of Arts and Communication, as well as the College of Public Service, collaborated to hold Anderson’s workshop “Designing Knowledge Through Play” on Nov. 25, 2025. The workshop saw immense success and attendance as Natacha Poggio, associate professor at the University of Houston-Downtown, who helped organize the event, put it, “A full house on the last day of classes, that’s pretty amazing.”
During the first half of the event, Anderson demonstrates the value and versatility of paper through numerous examples, such as the flexagon, a record player with paper and a needle, as well as Bruno Munari, an Italian artist, and his experiment to make air visible with paper. With these examples, Anderson shows how paper can be used in hands-on ways to teach through play, just as she does with her interactive pop-up books, “This Book is a Camera,” “This Book is a Planetarium,“ and “Alphabet in Motion.” The first is a functioning camera, the second an actual planetarium.
Lastly, “Alphabet in Motion“ introduces various letterforms and their evolution in playful ways, with activities such as the one presented in the workshop: Kombinationschrift. In this activity, event participants were presented with a stencil in the Kombinationschrift font and directed to write their names without knowing what the font looked like or how to use the stencil. Many participants got creative with their stencils, including the one I created as a participant. Once everyone finished, Anderson unveiled the font and the proper use of the stencil.
Overall, the event and workshop were a great success, and all participants were able to leave with their names written with the stencil and with the opportunity to buy one of Anderson’s books.
