Designers, Mozart says “Let’s Play!”

When I design, I approach it as that I am playing. There are some designers that don’t like to say that they “play” when they design, because it gives the wrong impression that belittles what designers do. For example that designers are kids with crayons and it’s art time in grade school. Yes, we do need to show clients that what we do is important and serious work that can truly have an impact.

However, in my own personal vernacular of how I approach my design work, it will always be play. It’s what I enjoy and I enjoy to play.

Here’s an interesting clipping from a paper by Peter Presic that fully supports the importance of play in the arts:

“Plato considered play as fundamental to art, and the leap as the primoridal form of play. Among Mozart’s near contemporaries, the philosophers Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schiller, Christian Gottfried K√∂rner, and Hans-Georg N√∂geli reflected on the importance of play in art. Though he does not mention Mozart explicitly, Schiller’s description of the play-impulse is particularly important and has not before been fully mined for the insights it can give into musical practice. The concept of ‘deep play’ discussed by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz in the context of Balinese gambling is also helpful in this musical context. Play is dynamic and must “deepen” itself or cease. These insights are the starting point of a close discussion of the finale of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in B-, K. 570.”

Thanks to Bernie DeKoven for finding this clipping.