The Value of Randomness in Design

It's interesting how differently people perceive randomness and the value they attribute to it. For a long time, I believed that true value lies in control. When we control the situation and ourselves, it's valuable. It's a triumph of will, thought, and reason. After all, it's so satisfying and wonderful to change the world through conscious action and calculation.

That's why, in art and design, I favored the rational. There had to be an idea, a thought, some kind of logical basis. But if there isn't one, if the result is random, then there's nothing to be proud of, nothing to praise. It's an unconscious result, beyond my control.

The problem with this position is that, in general, there are no situations in which we can control everything. It's not even a question of resources, but rather a question of an infinite number of variables that are impossible to account for. It's a chaotic system. As a result, in every result, even successful ones, I tried to ensure, during my study and analysis, that there were no coincidences, but of course, I always found them. And welcome the impostor syndrome. I didn't do it, it just happened.

But once, at a lecture, Georgiy Pinkhassov expressed a simple but striking thought. That value lies precisely in chance! Taking a photograph is a matter of technique, not difficult. But when it's logical and predictable, it's less valuable. However, if a photograph reveals something unexpected, even for the photographer, but interesting, the value of the shot increases exponentially. Because we've managed to capture something greater than ourselves, greater than our will and reason. Then the primary task is to recognize these chance occurrences.

This is precisely the position I hold close to my heart right now. There's value in randomness, and my job as a designer (or, more broadly, as a person) is to create the conditions for interesting solutions to emerge. When designing a system, you can't predict all its states, but you can set rules and constraints.

And each unique state of the system is a random occurrence that can be effective, useful, or even beautiful. I love it when a solution turns out better than I expected.

In this position, the designer's task is to be an observer. To experience, explore, feel, analyze, and think. Empiricism, intuition, and philosophy are methods of understanding the environment and people, and design is a tool. It turns out that the foundation of the designer's profession is a passion for learning.