Design and the Play

Reading the Design and the Play instinct by Paul Rand, I have come up with many thoughts in my head on what graphic design really is. Before taking this class, I thought graphiic design was just a bunch of shapes and figures into random designs. But, reading this article, Rand expressed how many people think of graphic design like this. He claims, “The results of such vagaries are sometimes pretty, but mostly meaningless or monotonous.” While in some cases, you are able to throw nonsense on a page and call it graphic design, you most certainly need a theme and design. I both agree and disagree with his perspective on this matter. As someone who is not advanced in any art field, especially graphic design, I would find any pattern interesting and pretty, because I don’t know what the designer is going for. However if I was more advanced, such as Paul Rand, I would become upset when a design does not hit it’s mark. To me it may look enjoyable, but to an expert, the same design could be a mess.

With his graphic design beliefs in mind, he believes in this for teaching as well. Rand believes in teaching working best when there are rules and practical problems. I have been in classes where the teacher or professor does not care about food, talking, late work, etc. and from my experiences I retained less information from those classes than others with more set rules. While I still may have passed the class with no rules, there is a wide difference in passing and learning. The class with no rules results in me procrastinating and spitting anything out as work However, when in the set-rules classes, I have found myself learning the material at a good pace as well as retaining it for longer.