Being PLAYful - In Life and Design
After my 2025 visit to the annual Birmingham Design Festival, of which the theme was play, it prompted me to do some thinking around the theme. In this post I want to discuss how I keep my creative practise playful and also use play outside of work, as I am a strong believer in playing is not just for children…
Why are we talking about this?
Taking part in a collage and printing workshop hosted by Stephen (Neasden Control Centre) and Jimmy at the festival only reinforced how necessary it is we keep playing in work and life. Not taking the work too seriously and collaborating with others throughout the workshop helped me to detach from the perfectionism we can often attach to a creative output. We also made some super colourful sublimation printed banners and tote bags which was only a bonus!
The same thought came up after an entirely different interaction, this one with a senior haemotology doctor about his love of lego, where I confessed my love of jigsaws too. Why did it feel like a confession when playing is so integral to human nature?
Two separate play based interactions. One pickle who now has play on the brain…
Past Play…
As children, play was the main goal. I can remember playing in an imaginary town my siblings and I created on scooters in the garden, making houses for Sylvanian families and in fact, I can’t really remember doing much else. Obviously, less responsibilities leave more time for play, but why must it go completely as we move into adulthood. I have a feeling the priorities might change but our need for play remains.
Getting to do a creative job comes with a sometimes guilty feeling when ‘playing’ as my job (although i don't know if it feels like even 50% play with all the admin that comes with!) I think being playful is integral to the creative industries but sometimes feels at odds with the rest of the world’s workplaces, would we all benefit from more play at work?
Let’s bring back Play
In an effort to play more and in turn also reducing my screen time I picked up collage.
With housemate Headless Greg we joined Jenny’s local collage club (Sadly no longer running!). The key to making the club truly playful was to remove any expectations which was massively helped by the social and very encouraging atmosphere. Jenny’s structure of smaller prompts with some boundaries really helped us play more as I feel like some of my most creative ideas come with some restrictions as you have to find alternative solutions.
Is it the digital world that stops us playing? In a more online and therefore comparable space you have to fight against the need to curate your work. It’s hard not to let the mindset of perfectionism seep into my day to day and stop doing things just for the hell of it. Sketches are meant to be ugly, collages sometimes don't work out. But that is okay and doesn’t need to be shared if that removes the barrier to play!
Also the humble jigsaw is still there for me and I’m proud to have it as a source of play, more used as a tool to calm down a busy brain and cosy on down during the winter months, but still play nonetheless.
What do others think about play?
I put a question on the theme of play on Creative Boom’s online community The Studio and here’s some interesting takes…
"Play" to me, means unconstrained which is a bit different than "games" which have structure and rules.
Matthew Gallagher (https://designomatt.com/)
I like the no rules attitude. Although putting some limits on work I feel makes me more creative it’s good to remind ourselves no idea is a wrong idea. Think this is also based on what personally works for you. How many rules make you the most able to play.
I guess I see design and creativity in a lot of my "play" too when I drink whisky with friends I'm always looking at the label and box design or the bottle shape, when I play Xbox I'm always looking at the detail of the graphics, the small things in the background like the poster design or the signage
Richard Longmuir (https://www.richardlongmuir.com/)
This is a nice outcome from playing, it can feed back into work if the right thing happens. A reminder to be curious too.
Play could not be more important in my day to day! I usually practice play in the morning while sipping on my coffee by making digital portraits of my favorite musicians just for fun. I go alphabetically through my Spotify playlist and sketch away.
Myles Hunt (https://cargocollective.com/myleshuntart/Odd-Musical-Portraits)
Making it a regular part of your practise is something I aspire to do. Almost treating some play time as a warm up before taking on more challenging or different work tasks. Cue me buying a book for collage and potentially never using it…
It builds a resilient approach with critical thinking that allows you to not get bogged down, iterate quickly.
I play every day in one way or another. I sketch, draw, play games, read fiction, make models, lego and I love toys and comics. I find it allows me to keep my thinking free, open and malleable.
- Paul Leon (https://www.linkedin.com/in/paleon/)
Building a resilience is a great way to see play also. It lets you be freer when ideating not taking anything too seriously and not being afrad to throw out all kinds of ideas. As really, play doesnt have to have an outcome.