After Thoughts
“Design and the Play Instinct” by Paul Rand is a very informative piece that covers creativity in design. This article focuses on the fact of how engaging, arousing curiosity and creativity, and holding attention will help creativity flow and not be limited. According to Paul Rand, using the play instinct allows creativity to be taught and to be learned through a loose and open way. This is because when an individual is given a set of rules or guidelines to follow, their thoughts are limited and their way of thinking is construed and shrunk. If a student is given a problem with defined limits, and other properties that are contrast to the instinct of play, it will most likely turn the student away from the problem and they will lose interest. They also may think they are not allowed to think outside of the box and their work will not exemplify their full potential.
Agree or Disagree?
As a student myself, I completely agree with this way of teaching. When I am learning something black and white, it is very hard for me to keep interest. If my instructor were to put a spin on it, like Montaigne’s father, in Rand’s article, his father wrote the greek letters on playing cards and invented a game to hold his attention while teaching at the same time. Of course there are some things that can only be taught straight forward and strictly black and white, but when I am given an opportunity to think outside of the box and explore my imagination and put my creativity to paper, my work is always better than those with strict guidelines. I cannot speak for everyone, but I believe a lot of people would agree with this way of teaching. It all depends on how every person’s brains works, because for some people, without strict instruction, they are lost and cannot figure out what to do.
Wrapping it back up with design, I feel as thought when teaching design, you need to let the creativity flow. There can be certain guidelines that need to be followed, but there should not be strict instructions. For example, with the letter assignment, we were given guidelines such as we had to use a certain font and certain sized letters, but we could place the letters where we wanted. We could create something without any extreme limitations and because of that, everyone can express their creativity and they can do what they want. There is no right and wrong and that is truly the beauty of art.
