Make design fun again

Remember why you got into this in the first place

When did you discover that design was a thing? That there was a job where the primary activities were coming up with ideas and making them real? Think back as far as you can, all the way back to when you started. I bet there was a moment of delightful surprise when you realized something you did for fun, or for yourself, not only had a name, but was a real adult thing you could get paid to do.

My story is I was a Lego kid back in the pre-kit days. I loved taking generic piles of blocks and inventing my own worlds. I slowly realized, over years, I liked this activity of inventing more than playing with toys invented by someone else. That the making was more fun than the playing. But it wasn’t until college I first heard about design as a thing and something I could get paid to do. I was lucky both to learn this so young and to have it work out as a career.

But there are well known dangers for getting paid to do what you love. Everything becomes a measurement, a constraint, a rule, or a process. Circles becomes squares. Curves becomes angles. And the more money and people involved, which career growth says to pursue, the less fun the work tends to be. All the pleasures that that got us into this field slowly get worn down by the rules and systems that grow around it.

So I’m here to say make design fun again. Not for your career. Not for your job. But for you. You as a person. You as the person that got into this because it was something you found pleasurable for some reason without having to explain it to anyone else.

Go back all the way to how you started. It was probably with Legos, a sketchpad, a whiteboard or maybe even Minecraft. Think of those enjoyable, endless hours and how fulfilled you were. Then put everything else aside and just do something that’s fun. It doesn’t need a purpose, a goal, a KPI, or any of that organizational baggage you’ve likely internalized as necessary for creation. This might be hard to do. You’ve internalized rationality and the need to convince others. Try to make this into a switch you can turn off so you can be free to have fun.

Do something today simply because it’s what you want to do. Design a flying a car, a dream home, or a cover for the punk band you’ve always wanted to start. Or get a pencil and paper and just doodle. Let your body and your subconscious run the show for once. Stop thinking and stop making sense. You don’t have to show what you make to anyone, ever, so why is there so much resistance? Remember being younger and not having so many concerns and judgements about the things you make.

The heart of design is play, and we know it but forget to act on it. It’s good to move ideas around without entirely knowing why. And without a clear, specific purpose. Or maybe have the purpose of making something bad. Make badness the goal and see what happens. Make the worst design you’ve ever made (it’s harder and more fun than it sounds). Experimentation means you’re not entirely sure what you are doing and there is deep pleasure in not knowing. We rarely see other designers at work anymore, but this video from Matt Wiley shows that play and discovery are not only fun but central to what we do.