What I'm writing about…

Some professional collaborations begin long before they become actual work. Sometimes they begin in classrooms, in shared ideas, and in friendships that quietly continue through the different paths life takes.

That was the case with Do Hi ao Bye!: Curso Intensivo de Introdução ao Inglês, written by Lays Lima.

Lays and I met years ago while studying Psychology in Brazil. At that time, like many students trying to understand where life might take us, we often spoke about purpose, learning, and the ways knowledge can transform people’s lives. After graduation, however, our paths moved in different directions. I moved to London, while she moved to the United States.

It was there that something meaningful started to grow in her professional life. What began as informal support for Brazilian students who wanted to learn English gradually turned into something larger. She started teaching online, sometimes offering free lessons to people who didn’t have the financial means to pay for classes. Over time, that dedication evolved into a structured approach to teaching, influenced by her background in psychology and her desire to help students overcome barriers such as shyness, insecurity, and low confidence when learning a new language.

When she decided to transform that experience into a course and a book, she reached out to me with an invitation: to illustrate the project.

Even though my own path had taken me into a completely different professional environment in London, I accepted the challenge immediately. I have always been deeply drawn to art, design, and the process of creating something from an idea. The possibility of contributing visually to an educational project, especially one connected to someone whose journey I had witnessed from the beginning, felt both meaningful and creatively exciting.

My role was to illustrate the entire book, developing the visual language that accompanies the material across its 121 pages. The goal was not simply decorative illustration, but visuals that support learning: images that help simplify concepts, make the experience more engaging, and bring a sense of lightness to the first steps of learning English.

Participating in this project reminded me that creative work often lives at the intersection of many parts of who we are; our friendships, our interests, our curiosity, and our willingness to accept new challenges too.

What started years ago between two psychology students eventually became a small but meaningful collaboration across continents.

And sometimes, that is exactly how the most interesting projects come to life.

If you want to know more about Lays’s work, please check on Instagram @layslima.english