Memory, Instinct, and Design: Beyond Paul Rand’s “Play Principle”
Michael Golec
He wonders also about himself—that he cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him. It is a matter for wonder: the moment that is here and gone, that was nothing before and nothing after, returns like a specter to trouble the quiet of a later moment.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1873)
So, we are haunted. Nietzsche’s “specter” delivers the “chain” of memory to an unsuspecting subject. The reception of a variety of experiences and images, real and/or imagined, remains always and forever with that person. We do not forget. We cannot put aside, overcome, or disregard anything, especially that which is conveyed to us through experience and education. As Nietzsche proposes, it is not possible to completely deny our past. Yet, there are those of us who wish this were possible; they desire a loss of memory so that they may return to some primal state, so that they might act on instinct alone. Granted, the world in Nietzsche’s day was no more civilized than today, but somehow, in our current postindustrial/information society, we too feel that instinct escapes our grasp. We cannot fail to remember our civilized selves.
The question is, Do we possess any less instinct than our forbearers? And if so, How is it that we have lost our capacity for free activity? Can it be that the accumulation of experience and information pushes instinct aside? Indeed, Nietzsche goes on to write that learning banishes the free spirit and annihilates instinct. But still, we dream of a state where, unencumbered by trained responses and conditioning, we engage the world directly like a child or an animal. We know that to do so would entail a willful loss of memory.
Nietzsche suggests that to forget is to return to a time before learning. Forgetting is to revive the child or the purely instinctual animal who is not bound to repeat all that is learned. Yet, Nietzsche states that we “cannot learn to forget. . . .” Is forgetting then impossible? Coincidentally, it is Nietzsche who forgets, as the French philosopher Jacques Derrida notes in his exegesis of Nietzsche’s writing. Derrida quotes a fragment from Nietzsche’s Joyful Wisdom. The German philosopher writes, “I have forgotten my umbrella.” By his own inscription, Nietzsche remembers that he forgets. There is a momentary lapse of memory, but it is not absolute—erasure, for Nietzsche, and for us, is never complete. This is the acute paradox of Nietzsche’s specter. If we cannot learn to forget, and that which is not learned is instinctual, then forgetting must be instinctual. And memory, a capacity we are born with, works in much the same way. By Nietzsche’s logic, recollection must be instinctual because if it is not taught, thus it must be innate. Essential to this essay is, however, a reading of Nietzsche’s assertion as a remembrance of a past before learning, before the annihilation of instinct. My intention is to reveal that most important specter—instinct—which cannot take solid form but is ever ready to remind us that we can remember to forget. This activity, furthermore, is necessary to learning.
So, what of learning? Particularly, and this is straight to the point, what of design and learning? As expected, the graphic designer is not exempt from Nietzsche’s spectral phenomenon, from momentary loss and subsequent reclamation. On the contrary, he or she engages the ghostly visage that is memory, and, most importantly, the designer uses Nietzsche’s spook to a single purpose, that is, in the process of designing.
Learning to design is, on a fundamental level, a matter of trial and error. To discover what works best, the designer arranges his or her materials until the appropriate solution is found. But from what place does a designer draw material? Of course, the exterior world. The things a designer sees excite and inspire. The world is overstuffed with stuff, and designers are contracted to venture out and make sense of the proliferation of images and ideas. What prepares a designer for such a task, for organizing a number of communicative morsels that ideally impact a targeted audience? A number of factors come to mind: life experience, university or college education, vocational training, apprenticeship, art and design history, and instinct. What most consider to be second nature—the apprehension of an object, or an idea, sans reason—is Nietzsche’s spectral manifestation of deposited history. That is to say, what was once dormant rises like Nikolai Gogol’s ghost of Akakii Akakievich to startle and inform the designer. It is a memory (inscribed upon the subject through education, experience, and conditioning) that surfaces in direct relation to a project, or problem, at hand. Nonetheless, if we continue to adhere to Nietzsche’s spectral manifestations, then, as the designer continues to hone his or her craft, instinct vanishes. But not completely. As we will see, instinct reasserts itself, much like a playful ghost might appear, to contribute to the designer’s education and practice.
There remains, within the field of graphic design, an expectation on the part of clients and designers toward innovation. It is thought that a designer—forgetting the rules, forgetting history—forges ahead and creates new forms that, in turn, contribute to the designer’s growth within his or her field. Yet, how can unique solutions to design problems exist if the designer is simply the product of a design education? If, as Nietzsche proposes, one cannot forget, then how is it possible to ditch the rules that govern good design? It seems essential to the cultivation of a design practice that experimentation must continue so that yet another experience is added to the designer’s arsenal of maneuvers.
At best, the idea of innovation assumes an overturning, or questioning, of what was learned. But prior to this anticipated usurpation, a designer is given a project, the details of which are spelled out in a brief. When given an assignment, a designer is supplied a set of rules that are intended to govern a coherent outcome. For example, in the summer of 1990, I was one of twenty students who traveled to Brissago, Switzerland, to embark upon a five-week program to study design with Armin Hofmann and Paul Rand. It was the first week of class and Rand assigned his Léger project. After a brief slide introduction, which focused on the French artist’s production (a vividly colorful, tubular, transparent style), the students were instructed to develop a series of typographic images (the word “Léger” was used) that evoked the economy of the painter’s oeuvre. Simple. I had at my disposal the name Léger and a rudimentary understanding of the painter’s work, plus Rand’s outline. This is what I knew. These were the rules. Yet, how was I to impress, surprise, and delight my instructor? Was I to forget all that I knew of the design process?
Now, according to Rand, in order to innovate—to construct a thing that is unique—the designer must enact a scene of play. Apparently, this activity allows a designer to freely explore a myriad of possibilities. Nevertheless, every game has its rules, and, as the saying goes, the rules are made to be broken. Play creates boundaries, which, in turn, are breached—this is innovation. In other words, the given structure of a project, which is dictated by previous design successes as determined by an instructor (or client), is challenged and invigorated by a designer’s instinctual maneuvers. Rand writes in “Design and the Play Instinct,” “a problem with defined limits, with an implied or stated discipline (system of rules) that in turn is conducive to the instinct of play, will most likely yield an interested student and, very often, a meaningful and novel solution.” The scene of play, or what Rand calls the “play principle,” is a discourse between the objects (typography, illustration, and photography) at hand and their multiple relations. The rules are important, and without them, as Rand asserts, “there is no motivation, test of skill, or ultimate reward—in short, no game.” Rand continues his formulations in “Intuition and Ideas”:
Without regard to available systems . . . the designer works intuitively. . . . Very often a system is used merely as a crutch . . . regardless of need. . . . A system can be applied either intuitively or intentionally, interestingly or tediously. There is always the element of choice, sometimes called good judgment, at others good taste.
Rand makes clear that instinct is outside the system, that it is not part of, but is in certain circumstances drawn to, the system. By understanding this, we comprehend yet another aspect of Rand’s game. He implies that rules are broken and boundaries tested and crossed by his desire for a design student to achieve a “novel solution.” The rules, in and of themselves, are not sufficient. There must be an added element. Play, then, is a means to forget the rules if only for a moment, to return to instinct. The designer then remembers this moment of forgetting, this breaking of the rules, and applies this memory to the project at hand. Whether the playful moment leads to a good or a bad design is not important; on the contrary, what is essential is that the designer retains this moment, which is stored for use. Therefore, we can conclude that play always leads to learning, and can be considered, as Rand believes, an implement for design education. While the “game” functions as a tool for learning, it also serves to suggest alternatives to the rules; it “is an equally effective means for exploring the use of unorthodox materials. . . .” Ultimately, the play principle should result in the rupture of the given structure, while retaining the instructor’s (or client’s) primary goals.
Rand’s serious play as problem solving is, as most design students will agree, an established mode of education. As such, Rand’s play principle establishes any number of specters that will surely, and by his own educational purpose, intentionally “trouble the quiet of a later moment.” What may very well be an instinctual questioning of a project’s structure is retained as memory and thus ceases to be instinctual. If indeed there can be an instinctual maneuver, it is but a flicker that is apprehended by the designer and stowed away for subsequent appearances. The play principle constructs a scene of remembrance of forgetting.
To further elucidate Rand’s play principle, I will introduce yet another figure. When playing, as the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud asserts, the subject is removed from the everyday—he or she forgets daily concerns, restrictions, rationalizations, etc. The subject acts instinctually. Now, when the designer plays, he or she also forgets—forgets the rules of the game. Again, if play leads to an exciting and new solution to the problem at hand, the designer learns from the game. To be even more specific, I might add, Rand’s instructional theory is a tool for learning; it is not, as Rand proposes, learned. The play principle delivers what cannot be forgotten, what is relegated to some buried place—memory. But first it draws an intuitive response, that which is outside of, or beyond, the play principle. The action beyond learning is actually before learning. Furthermore, if instinct is likened to a child’s response, then what is beyond the play principle is actually before Rand’s scene of play. Returning to the time before learning allows the designer to continue learning, thus the play principle is not a model for memory per se, rather it accesses the very root of creation, which soon becomes just that which cannot be forgotten. This is precisely why play is a tool for learning, or, in other words, play is situated toward learning.
Again, participation in Rand’s designer’s game promotes unique solutions that challenge the original restrictions of a project. It is not too surprising to find that Rand is not alone in his idea. By attempting to explicate artistic genius, Freud suggests that play, fantasies, and daydreaming account for creativity. As Freud explains in “Creative Writers and Daydreaming,” play is unreal and is unconnected to the concerns of the everyday. Therefore, play is not bound by social or historical constrictions or preconceptions. As one grows older, however, one ceases to play, hence play is exchanged for daydreams and fantasies. Moreover, Freud believes that daydreams and fantasies bear the trace of an original moment. Freud writes that a subject who daydreams regains “what he possessed in his happy childhood.” But the subject’s gain, as Freud states, is predicated on a wish, which “makes use of an occasion in the present to construct, on a pattern of the past, a picture of the future.” Taking a cue from Freud’s essay, and addressing Rand’s play principle, I propose that a designer’s innovation (future) is predicated on the interplay of pre-memory (instinct), memory (past), and the rules of the assignment (present). In other words, Freud’s notion of the conjured past influences the present, which, in turn, determines the future. For Freud, creation is a continuation of child play, not the child playing, which overcomes the barriers that inevitably constrict creative solutions. But pre-memory is most important to this essay’s assertions, for it is here that I locate, as does Freud and Nietzsche, instinctual activity. The experience of instinctual moments, however, is soon relegated to memory. And it is the conjured past—the return of the dormant child, or animal—that is the specter. In the end, instinct always succumbs to memory, and the childlike act is learned and cannot be forgotten. As this specter is present during the problem-solving process (Rand’s game), it ruptures the stasis of the assignment. This is how a designer overcomes the inevitable constriction of the instructor’s (or the client’s) brief. It is the specter, the memory of the game, that allows the designer to push elements around, to determine compositional quality, to become aware of the boundaries. That sudden spark that sets him or her to push things around, like the attention-starved spook who flings the family heirlooms and furniture, the unforgotten often provokes spectacular rearrangements. Confronted by the specter of design education, the designer is compelled to act, to question, and to achieve fresh forms.
During the summer of 1990, I had the opportunity to see one of these ghosts. Keenly aware of the blank white sheet that lay before me—it literally reflected the void that was my mind—I was struggling with Rand’s Léger project. I just didn’t know where to start. Yes, of course, one begins with pencil and paper. One sketches. At least that is what I had been taught. Ideas are generated in this manner. The freedom of drawing, the mind unencumbered by preconceptions, and the ability to discern that which is useful all add up to the scene that Rand refers to as the play principle. I should have been playing. Instead, I was “angsting.” I had no idea.
Then Rand came to my little table (the class convened in a primary school lunchroom). He sat down beside me and surveyed my desert. Picking up a stray pencil and pulling at a pad, Rand set to play. After a moment, he rose and moved on to the next little table, and I was left with a charming sketch of a ghost with “LE” hovering just to the left of Rand’s apparition—le spectre, or the specter.