Pierpaolo Barresi shares how he’s always dreamed of creating something significant. He founded Yobi Scribes, an Italian company that uses creativity, art, games, and communal enjoyment to help achieve business objectives.

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Running Order

• Intro
• Welcome
• Who is Pierpaolo Barresi?
• Pierpaolo's Origin Story
• Pierpaolo's current work
• Sponsor: Concepts
• Tips
• Tools
• Where to find Pierpaolo
• Outro

Links

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Yobi Scribes Website
• Pierpaolo on LinkedIn
• Pierpaolo on Instagram

Tools

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Uni-posca Markers
• GROG Markers
• iPad
• Wacom Tablet
• Adobe Illustrator

Tips

1. Have fun.
2. Do what you know.
3. Give thanks.

Credits

• Producer: Alec Pulianas
• Shownotes and transcripts: Esther Odoro
• Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer

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Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike, and I'm here with my friend Pierpaolo Barresi. Pierpaolo, how are you doing today? It's so good to have you.

Pierpaolo Barresi: Yeah, nice to meet you, all the people. Nice to meet you again, Mike. Super nice, sunny day in Bologna. So I smile more than rainy days.

MR: I can relate to that. Living in Milwaukee, we're in the middle of a snowstorm now. So hopefully, I'll be happy after I'm done shoveling today. We'll see. Anyway, well, so Pierpaolo is one of the principal creators of Yobi Scribes. We've continually bumped into each other all over the internet and through friends like Mauro Toselli, and it just seemed like it was time to have Pierpaolo on the show and learn his story and hear what he does and all those things. So, Pierpaolo, let's start with who you are and what you do.

PB: Yeah. I am a South Italy guy. I started from the bottom, from the very bottom of Italy. I'm a young boy now. I am more or less 40 years old, and I'm the creative director of Yobi Scribes. Yobi Scribes is a creative crew of artists, designers, scribers, sketchers, knowledge workers, a lot of competence and super nice people is in Yobi. And we are in Italy active, from more or less 10 years.

I started as a self-employed, just me. But my idea from when I was a young boy is to create something bigger, is to share with the others. If you ask me, which is your art? My art, my talent is to connect people and to create things together. So this is my short story.

MR: Great. And so, it sounds like you have quite a variety of skills that you offer to companies and individuals, one of which is scribing, right? Like graphic recording, graphic facilitation, sketchnoting, but it sounds like even more than that. Tell me a little bit more about what Yobi Scribes does, and then also where does this name Yobi come from? What does it mean?

PB: There is an interesting story behind the name Yobi. As Yobi Scribes team, we do mainly scribes and graphic recording, is our core business. The machine is moved by the scribes. We also do graphic design, illustration for internal companies. So we work mainly with the internal part of the companies. We also do videos. We do also some facilitation and creative skill boosters. We love to call this in this way.

We try to connect objective with creativity, reaching objective through creativity, through art, through games, through having fun together. So scribing is the last part in some way because everything comes and join into the scribes, but we try to support and help the company in a bigger way.

MR: That's really cool. So the name Yobi, what's the significance of that name?

PB: Yobi comes from stupid research on Google Maps. We were looking for a short name that was memorable, that was connected with our background. Two of the founders have a huge important hip-hop and graffiti background. So we come from this kind of mood and field. And Yobi, "Yo" is one of the--is like Ciao in Italian. "Yo" is for the black people and also the Italian people in the U.S. say "Yo."

We find that this national park in Papua New Guinea close to New Zealand, just moving the mouse around Google Maps like that looking for a name. And when we see this name, we say, "Whoa, this is the name." We found that the next step is to have a company journey altogether in Yobi, it's not so close to Italy, but one day it is in our objective.

MR: So it is an actual place then in Papua New Guinea sounds like?

PB: Yes. Yes.

MR: Interesting.

PB: I think it's a gross place. It is not the beautiful place over there. If you look on Google Maps, it is not the best place of the region of the nation.

MR: Sure.

PB: Sometimes people tag Yobi on Instagram from the place, and we see the stories. It is the end of arrival. Just not so beautiful. But for us, it's wonderful.

MR: Interesting, interesting. So, I have a funny little story about Google Maps, if you'd like to hear it.

PB: Yes. I want to hear it.

MR: So my son, now he's 21, but when he was a little boy when he was, I dunno, eight or nine years old, we had set up a computer for him to play games on Thomas The Train games and such. One of the games he wanted to always play was Google Maps. At the time, they had an application that you could search around the world. It started with a globe, and you would zoom in. He sat behind me in my office at the time I sat on the other side.

He was home from school one day, and I hear him going, "Woo, woo woo." And I'm like, "What are you doing, Nathan?" I turned around and he said, "I'm playing Google Maps." And you just see this globe floating in space. He thought that was the funniest thing, was to make this the earth shake, like, you know, like crazy. So that was pretty funny.

PB: We played the same game.

MR: Really? Yeah, exactly. That's how you ended up with the name. That's great.

PB: Yes. So the names come from this creative research.

MR: Yeah, exactly. That's great. That totally fits with your whole way of being, right? So that makes total sense. So with Yobi Scribes, tell me how you got to that place. Now, you're doing this thing. How did you end up there? Where did you grow up? Did you grow up in Bologna or have you travelled? Were there things that happened that sort of directed you bit by bit toward the life that you have now? I would love to hear that story.

PB: Super. I born, as I told you, in South Italy in a small town close to the sea--in front of the sea. I studied at Classic Lyceum for my high school. Then I moved to Naples. It's a longer travel story. Then I moved to Naples to study law. I studied two years law. Then I recognized that not mine, and I changed and move from Naples to Bologna.

MR: Okay.

PB: In Bologna, I start to study anthropology. And after my degree in anthropology, I was a little bit, "Oh, what I have to do now? I want to do graphics. I want to do something with my hands. I want to create using my mind and my hands together. Not only my mind or not only my hands." And I decided to start a career as a graphic designer. Starting also in this case, from the bottom, making flyers for my friends.

My friend was a musician, was an artist. I am not able to play nothing. So I start to make graphics for them using my background as a graffiti writer, as a drawer, not illustrator. I don't want to say illustrator. After that, I study in this school, and from this school I win master degree in a school in Milan, the science school in Milan. And I move from Bologna to Milan.

In Milan in this master's, a person that already knows graphic facilitation, scribes, my mentor comes to run a workshop, and I immediately fall in love with him and with the methodology. Also, because the only things that helped me in my studies, in my career as a student was to sketching things. I already studied working and thinking with the sketching.

My graffiti background also helps me to understand immediately the power of graphic re