Our Creative Process

This article will give you a look behind the scenes of this online store. It briefly explains how projects move from start to finish, what tools we use, and why we make certain choices. By taking you along this small journey, we can explain our answers to bigger questions such as “do you use AI?” and “how do you come up with these things!?”

Where Ideas Start

There’s no Idea Shop, or Get-An-Idea drink, or some Inspiration Formula. Ideas simply appear. They appear when you’re just living your life and taking in everything happening around you. I’ve had great ideas because someone nearby just happened to talk about their day. I’ve had great ideas because I saw the sun set over a beautiful beach. I’ve had great ideas while watching a random movie about a topic tangentially related to my idea.

Most creative people quickly learn to write it all down. Ideas are “free” in the sense that they come quickly, suddenly, and without effort. But if you want to keep them, don’t rely on our faulty memory.

As such, there’s a huge folder of ideas and future projects for this online store. All very neatly organized into factions, categories, topics, just by using well-named folders and files. All these ideas are written in plain “Markdown” documents.

A lot of it will never see the light of day. Some ideas turn out to be impossible/impractical. Some just weren’t as good. Some are very similar to another idea we already executed, so it can’t vouch for its existence. And some are simply moved to “do this whenever we refresh our Easter-themed resources”, which might be … never.

But a lot of it does see the light of day. What starts as a vague sentence fragment (“what if we did CROSSWORDS but with SYLLABLES!?”) eventually turns into a finished product.

What really helps us is the fact that we have an educational approach. We have a curriculum with topics in a (mostly) sensible, logical order. You have to learn your numbers 1–10 before you learn 10–100, right? And so, when in doubt, we just pick the next idea on this list. The next educational topic to cover. We look at the many ideas we had, select the most promising ones, and then … try to make them.

On our Curriculum page, we explain how we ended up with our level system and general order of topics. It’s based on a variety of curriculae around the world. With some modifications based on personal experience, and slightly more focus on things besides language and math.

The Specification Phase

I’ve always called this “specification”, but even within our team there’s no consensus on the name. It’s simply the act of moving from “hey a vague promising idea” to “this is how the idea is going to work specifically”. We start specifying all the different parts that we need to figure out.

For example, here’s a snippet of an idea: “Let’s create a board game to teach kids the order of numbers (1–9).”

Okay. So how do we do it? Let’s specify every major part of a board game’s rules.

• The objective of the game should be to get numbers in order. This means kids are automatically rewarded for completing the skill (correctly) by, you know, winning the game.
• So, perhaps, the setup to the game is to randomly plop down cards with numbers in a row. It’s fast, it’s simple, it makes the numbers public information (anyone can see) so the Guardian can help the kids out if needed.
• And then the gameplay—somehow—has to do with making numbers swap places.

This is one “specification round”. This can literally take 10 seconds, or it can take 10 minutes of staring at the screen until you figure something out. This might be the thought you have when you wake up, or you might need to consciously look for this.

In any case, most projects need several of these “specification rounds” to get more, and more, and more specific.

• Okay, so we have cards with numbers. How many? Every number appears once? Twice? Do some numbers appear multiple times? For now, let’s say every number appears once.
• Okay, so on your turn you need to swap numbers. What’s the rule for this? How to make it a gamey action?
  • Maybe the kids have cards in their hand too. They can only swap a number if they can play it themselves.
  • Or maybe, when you swap two numbers, you must play a card that is the result when you add or subtract those numbers!
  • And so forth.

Please remember all of this is still just inside one text file. That one Markdown document for each project. Things are written, things are deleted, and over time a structure appears and only the best ideas remain. Of course, if someone finds an image that can inform the project, or already starts doing something else, that’s fine. Those extra files will just be put in the same folder.

After a while, the rules will be (mostly) set in stone. Once we know the rules, we can create the material for that. We start looking at a possible theme/visual design, what pages we need in the PDF, what information must be on cards, and we make that. That text file with the idea is transformed into illustrations, designs, etcetera.

Until, at the end, the entire game will be done. It will have specific rules and specific material, combined in one PDF you can buy.

This was a general overview of that process. So let’s dive into more specifics now ;)

The Team Composition

Artists are dreamers. Especially ones who start an ambitious webshop like this one. They tend to try and learn all the skills, dabbling a bit in every creative field.

This is fine! As the (full) saying goes: “Jack of all trades, master of none, is still better than a master of one”

Reality, however, has a say too. Some things just can’t be done, at least not right now and with our current means. Sometimes you simply end up with boring work on your plate for a week, because some product has to be finished and someone else already did the fun part.

This means some ideas get preference over others. It means we’re more likely to make certain things, and to a higher quality, than others. It means our process/approach can be different too.

As such, at time of writing, the list below is basically the composition of skills.

• Writing (30%): most experience and skill resides here. This makes it a guarantee that all our stories are completely crafted by us, from scratch. And probably with lots of speed and enthusiasm! We have never seen any reason to use AI. The webshop has a massive number of stories/books for this reason.
• Game/Experience Design (30%): you only need to check out Pandaqi to see how much experience we have crafting games, escape rooms, etcetera. This is a crucial skill that makes our Quizzes, Escape Rooms and Games possible. This is what takes a vague idea to a playable and fun game within a day. Again, no reason to use AI here, especially not because it’s more than terrible at it.
• Puzzle/Challenge Design (15%): this includes designing exercises and tests for Teachers. It’s an area with some asymmetry. We can design puzzles quite well, and better with each attempt. But designing exercises that fit within what schools expect of a curriculum is challenging. As such, AI is only used to quickly get/summarize topical information and turn it into a “test” with a variety of questions. It’s at least as fast and as good at that part as humans.
• Illustration/Graphic Design (15%): this is a hard one. There is skill and experience in design and illustration, but it’s not on the same level as the other skills. This is partially due to the fact this online store started from nothing. Not even scraps—nothing. It started with one person and a terrible 15 year old laptop, which means it absolutely couldn’t support any drawing or visual editing. AI is used most heavily here because the alternative is having no images, or every product taking 10x as long to make.
• Marketing/Business (10%): we’re no marketeers and certainly not interested in money or “growing a business”. We only do marketing insofar as it’s needed to explain what our products are and help people find them. And still it takes a lot of time and skill to write the right descriptions, make sure each product has at least 3–5 high quality images, etcetera. That’s why the percentage is quite high. Ugh.
• Music (0%): like with illustration, we lost the means to record things at a professional level some time ago. Unlike illustration, this is absolutely one of our best skills and we’d love to create educational songs or introduce more audio into our products. In all the earliest products, narrations/voice samples were done by a natural AI voice. We hope to grow this percentage in the future.

Our very restricted means made us such fans of minimalism and simple processes. It’s why we stay in that text file stage for as long as possible. Most of our ideas are basically fully formed, tested, specified, revised, mulled-over, before we take the jump to actually execute it.

There’s practically no waste in this process. Every illustration we make is used. Every story outlined actually written and included in the bundle. It just takes some more effort and discipline, because we refuse to throw a bag of money at a problem, just like we refuse to execute a half-assed idea.

At the same time, this limits what we can do and forces us to use AI or shortcuts more often than we’d like. As soon as funds allow, we are set on hiring other creatives to help out, and/or buying proper equipment for ourselves. Products on this store could be 100% AI-less, and even prettier and better, but that’s a future goal. We know, more than most, how tough it is to earn a living as a creative, and so we want to support others as soon as we can.

The Shared Assets

From the start, we built a large library of shared assets. If we’ve drawn a cow once, we can just reuse that illustration whenever we need a cow! If we have a high-quality audio sample of the word “cow”, same thing.

This is great. It already saved us an immeasurable amount of time and effort. Everything within the curriculum uses this shared library. (Any “other” products, such as themed escape rooms that have nothing to do with any school topic, do receive unique fonts, drawings, etcetera.)

With every educational product we make now, at least 95% can be taken from our shared assets, and we create 5% new assets. That’s how it keeps growing, making new projects possible. (If you know you have more images/audio at your disposal, it allows you to be more creative and execute other ideas.)

You can see the minimalism here, again.

• If an emoji exists of the thing we want to draw, we base ourselves on that. Because emojis nowadays are the perfect balance between simplicity and clear communication, at least in our eyes. (If not, no big deal, we draw it ourselves while sticking to previously defined colors and patterns.)
• We add a little of our own flavor, details and tweaks to images. This makes the entire look consistent and a bit prettier. It also protects us a bit, because nobody can copy our stuff and pretend it’s their own, because our “brand” is literally branded into all these images.
• As for audio, we mostly use free AI narration that sounds natural and high-quality. Once we have the original sample, we edit it. (Prevent noise/unwanted bits, all audio in the shared library normalized—at a consistent and loud volume—and cut it as short as possible to keep file size down.)
• We haven’t had much need/desire for video. But when we do, it follows the same practice. We edit the videos to consistent contrast, volume, etcetera across the board.

And then … we save all of that to the shared library under sensible names! It grows and grows, making us faster and faster at new (educational) projects.

And so, the first step to executing the idea (which we wrote in that text file) is usually to check our shared assets. Grab what we need; determine what new things we need to make.

When In Doubt: Templates

Most of our work ends with purchaseable PDFs. This means we need some nice background illustration for the pages, we need to pick our fonts and sizes, we need to prepare the document to slot everything in. We usually call this “template work”.

Now, template work is crucial. Without it you have no base from which to start building. You have no clear overview of all the images you need, nor a place to slot in this images once the final version is done.

But it’s also … boring. Not creative. Just clever set-up and preparation. As such, whenever we’re stuck on some idea or waiting for inspiration to strike, we usually pass the time with template work. Set up the next few PDFs. Already make sure they contain the right number of pages, labeled for what should go inside them.

Or, in many case, we can template a bit further too.

For example, maybe we work on a game idea based on cards. Then whatever we do, we’ll need some nice background image for the cards. Or a font for the text/numbers on the cards. Those are things you can already start doing. Even if you’re not entirely sure about the details of what the game will be.

And if you do that work, you’ll already have a nice template waiting for you when you do get inspiration and figure out the idea. You’ll already have a document waiting, with the right pages, a card design, a font, the rules explained, all waiting for you to add finishing touches.

As such, it’s not unheard of to create 20 mostly empty documents in a day … which will remain empty for a few more weeks until someone finally fills in the details. But that’s fine! That’s crucial work too. And it makes those next steps much easier later.

The Tools We Use

We would always recommend picking free, open source, minimalist tools for your work. Saves you a lot of money. Allows you to easily switch or transfer work when your old tool stops working or you buy a new PC.

As such,

• Writing/Text? Visual Studio Code and/or Obsidian.
• Design? Affinity Designer
• Illustration? Krita
• Music? Audacity
• (If we’re ever able to make our own videos or video games again, we’d use Da Vinci Resolve and Godot.)

Anything else is done via small tools we coded ourselves, or small free tools coded by others that we use from the command line (thank you!)

It’s extremely lightweight. The entire folder of ideas and projects half in development is so small you can easily take it anywhere, work on it anywhere, keep multiple versions around without slowing down your computer, etcetera.

We also recognize it’s not for everyone. Some are prepared to pay full price for a few more features, or guaranteed updates, or keeping a software they already know how to use. That’s fine! We’re just explaining our own tools and philosophy.

Marketing & Finishing Touches

As stated, the final stretch is always much longer than we want. But it’s a necessary one! We’ve learned that from previous long-running projects. You simply have to make the time (and/or money) to get a solid bit of marketing done for every product. When you think you’re done, you’re not done yet.

Imagine trying to convince someone to try some experimental educational game … based on two lines of text and no images.

No, no, that won’t do. We try to have 3 images minimum. Every product gets a unique header/thumbnail image anyway. We describe the product, why we made it, why you might want to use it, and any fun facts or remarks that might help you understand it and want to use it. We keep a detailed and accurate list of the contents of the product, as well as a rhyming description and list of tags to categorize it.

This is a lot of work. It can easily take a day to do all these steps for only several products. For our biggest products, it takes at least day for that one product. Because we really want to get it right. Really show you what’s inside and hope to convince you to give it a try.

Look at it this way. If we spent “only” 20 hours on a product, it’s fine to sell it for less money and only spend one more hour on the marketing/finishing touches. If we spent 100+ hours on a product, it would be a massive waste to have it overlooked by everyone. Relatively speaking, it’s not a big investment to spend another 10 hours preparing loads of images, writing a great description, creating a unique attractive thumbnail drawing, etcetera.

For you, this is just a great way to subtly gauge how long we spent on a product ;)

Small products, very experimental tiny things, get little marketing. Bigger products, things we really believe in and want to shine, get loads of custom images and extra push behind it.

Research & Consultation

The most common reaction from teachers/schools is that they miss the step where we check and verify our work with educational experts. We understand why you’d want that. We’re also very clear about how we don’t do that and we’re not professional teachers.

First and foremost, we lack the network and funds to do this. We can’t stress enough how we started from less than nothing—not even a proper home to live in.

Secondly, we don’t see this is as beneficial, and see it as potentially even harmful. Science and logic very much don’t agree with all the practices and rules going on in schooling systems, so why force ourselves into the same mold? We’re doing something different on purpose. We’re doing the thing that is actually proven to work much better for learning, growth and development. We’re trying to break everyone free from the shackles of our inefficient and harmful systems of education, and having someone tell us to do everything the way you’re supposed to will not help.

Of course, we can still make mistakes or make sub-par products. That’s why you’re always free to give feedback and criticize. That’s the beauty of this independent webshop hosting digital products: we can update every product easily, and everyone who ever bought it gets the updated version for free, automatically.

This means you will never try our products? That’s okay. It’s your choice. You don’t know what you’re missing—but still your choice!

That’s the whole point. We don’t lock you into any system or force you to use specific things in a specific order. Use what works; don’t use anything else. Try different things; stick to what students respond to best.

But we will never have any vague message or marketing “seal of approval” from mysterious, anonymous educational experts. Because we’re not liars. We would always challenge all other websites selling educational content to show the receipts. Explain specifically why your product is such an amazing tool for education and which group of notable experts determined this—otherwise such a claim is just a lot of nothing. And we don’t say this to put down our competition—we don’t care! and they’re not really our competition anyway!—but just to put an end to misleading marketing claims and convincing poor teachers/homeschoolers to buy things they don’t need.

Yes, some educational experts have great insights and can really help. Similar to how everyone remembers a few teachers from their youth that were amazing and taught them more than all the other teachers combined. But it’s not a “guarantee”. There is no 100% magic formula for guaranteed learning or educational value. And, implied by the previous statement, the vast majority of people working in the field of education absolutely have no clue what they’re doing there. Because we all remember a large array of teachers from our youth that were plain horrible, dumb or little dictators in the classroom ;)

As such, most of our research is simply done by ourselves in a variety of ways: searching for information, reading articles, reading books, playing other educational games, chasing down previous work in the same vein, etcetera.

Whenever we are inspired by some other product or source, we list it and recommend it in our “external resources” section. In case it needed mentioning, AI is basically never used in research or consultation. We’re much faster (and actually free/critical) doing it all ourselves, chasing down leads and making notes.

Whenever an opportunity presents itself, we consult with people around us. Tiamo actually knows a lot of teachers—he seems to attract them somehow, even on dating apps. We all have groups with which we play games from time to time. Most of the time, the game only takes 30 minutes, but talking and discussing it takes 2 hours. At the end of the game night, we go home with a laundry list of feedback, possible fixes, and new ideas.

But there’s no strict protocol here, and there shouldn’t be. We will never make claims we can’t back up with specific work or information. We won’t pretend that just because we have a degree, or because we’ve done 100 hours of research, something must be good. There’s no guarantee. We have games that took 2 hours to make that we think are vastly superior (both in educational and fun value) to games we sweat over for an entire week. We made puzzles we thought were really hard, but ended up the perfect difficulty for many kids—and we made puzzles that followed all the conventional wisdom around how to teach this topic to 5-year-olds, and they failed spectacularly.

Reality is where it’s at. Just make the thing, let people explore and use it, take lessons from it to make the next thing better.

All that matters is that kids understand the thing and find enough fun in it to keep trying and engaging with it. Those same rules apply anyway, in all creative projects, even those made for adults. Especially those made for adults. It sometimes feels impossible to convince an adult to even try a game or a puzzle, even if you’ve simplified the rules and prettified the presentation as much as you can. Any activity becomes an educational activity for kids: their brains are like a sponge, and they don’t have wrong assumptions that make them turn down play.

What use is a great, informative, 100% accurate textbook if nobody wants to read it? What use is an educational game endorsed by teachers if no kid wants to play it even once? What use is a great lecture if nobody can be bothered to listen or attend?

We make products with the absolute simplest of rules and most attractive of themes, highly focused on some part of the curriculum, but putting fun first. That’s where all our research and feedback goes!

Conclusion

If we forgot to mention something, contact us!

Otherwise, we hope this was a fun look into the creative process behind this online store.

There are people who say creativity is magic, and those who say it’s just hard work. Both are right. Many ideas come out of nowhere and some of our best games seemed more a lucky find than anything. At the same time, you can hone those skills, you can be open to inspiration and to turning every educational topic into a game, and you can create a workflow to actually specify and finish those ideas.

We use the practice of get the screenplay perfect first, then pull the trigger on the (more expensive/risky/time-consuming) execution. Because it’s vastly superior to the alternative. And because, when we just started, we absolutely had no other choice. And so we work in simple plain text files, specifying and revising, until we’re ready to move on something. And once we do, because of that plan, we can move fast and usually without waste/shortcuts/missed potential.

We use AI sparingly. For the parts we can’t do ourselves or that AI is simply much better at; almost exclusively complex/detailed illustrations and audio samples. We personally dream of a world without copyright and unfair systems of economy, which would allow us to make everything on this webshop free. But we don’t live in that world yet! So for now, we try to not tread on other’s copyrighted work (that went into training the AI), and keep asking money and some protections for our own work. The moment we realize we have to use AI for something, we are basically guaranteed to have a bad day and feel like lousy artists. If we had to give a number, we’d say the work is 97% ours and 3% AI.

And, as a reminder, here are some vows going into the future:

• Whenever funds allow, we will hire an artist to do what AI is doing for us now.
• Whenever funds allow, we want to buy the equipment to do more music and illustration work in-house.
• Whenever funds allow, older (or most-wanted) educational products will become free.

We have no intention of always growing or ever seeking more profit. We’ll stay a small team, minimalist and lean, just moving through that curriculum and turning it all into games and puzzles. Because every time we thought it couldn’t be done … we somehow found a way to turn the topic into something much more fun and effective. If you keep putting in the work, creativity will find a way to solve the problem.

And so, we hope, this article will remain (mostly) true for a long while.

Have fun, keep learning and playing,

A Mysterious Team Of Witches And Wizards