Method of Action is an education website launching courses in design, entrepreneurship and gardening. To get as intrigued as I am, test out your typographic skills in their 5-minute kerning game.

KernType is a game about kerning - the aesthetic balancing of letters in typography - a clever little game to get us interested in Method of Action. Take a crack at 10 quick typographic corrections, scored for your accuracy at each level, and averaged out at the end.  

It worked for me, and I've since been intrigued by their blog which is a refreshingly eclectic gathering of posts on programming, education, and design.  I'm still getting through it, but it's very interesting reading to flesh out the five minute distraction you already committed to their little game. Take another desk-lunch, and dig in.

So what & who is Method of Action?  They are Mark McKay and María Manuera, specialising in journalism, communication, interaction & web design.  The combination seems perfect, and their idea sounds cool.

"Method of Action is an educational website that will launch with three different courses: design, entrepreneurship and gardening. Every course is composed by 50 different "missions". Each mission will be accompanied by insightful articles or video that establish best practices for the task at hand, recommending books for further reading, or tools that can help you accomplish your goal."

Their continued explanation of how they think is pretty engaging too… "There's a tremendous amount of beaty in things if you have deep knowledge about how they are built, be they organic or man-made. When I moved to Canada I brought along a European style coffee maker. My uncle - an engineer - was fascinated with the mechanics. He took it apart and studied every piece. I had always though it was "nice" but my uncle found a much more deeper functional beauty.  

Knowledge is acquired by actually doing things and reflecting upon it. Proactively thinking about how you can improve what you did."

Nothing earth-shattering there, but god, its refreshing to have it stated so simply without the aching linguistic flourish of most design start-ups.

Anyway, enjoy their game, and keep an eye on it, so we can find out why gardening is in the mix. I got 86 in a rush. I think I have to grow some tomatoes to improve my score.

Thanks Lisa for the link!