Just as adversity pushes you in the human process to become more crafty, adding constraints to your designs can boost your creativity. In a documentary named The Five Obstructions a man fought his resources, surroundings and creative limits to recreate a movie called The Perfect Human, five times. For each movie, he was given constraints, but the number of constraints increased with each one. The task, it seemed, was impossible to overcome.
After much struggle and hardship, he prospered and re-wrote six astounding movies. Constraints and adversity are considered negative words and situations, but actually, they aren’t. While you are going through them, they feel quite uncomfortable, but once you take them head on and win, there is nothing more exhilarating.
Just as life would be very boring and stagnant without adversity, so would designing be without constraints. Believe it or not, there are benefits. An example of no constraints would be someone asking you to design a website that caters to ferret owners. It seems easy, right? But is it?
An example of a design request using constraints would be to design a website catering to owners of deaf albino ferrets. While this constraint example is not very stringent, you hopefully get the idea. When you read the first request, your mind was totally open to numerous ideas, possibly, too many. On the other hand, the second request gives you fewer choices, but you probably already started the design in your head.
Another example is to think of adversity. You have a woman, with no current adversities, that goes to the mall shopping for her daughter’s graduation. A second woman is suffering from the economy and is unemployed, and she goes to the mall for the same reason. Who of the two, do you think, is going to be more creative? Obviously, it will be the second woman.
Returning to the art of web designing, constraints greatly assist the process. To begin with, they help with deciding the first steps of the design project, and the direction it will take, secondly, the technique and style to use. As a designer, if you keep adding constraints to your work, you will constantly be challenging your skills, which can only help you mature.
To practice applying constraints, below you will find some enjoyable constraints. Remember that if you apply this to a client request, you have to work in your constraints into theirs.
• Use barely any images and create the effect with only text, color and layout.
• Use a diamond shape rather than a grid.
• Use as many elements from designers you admire that you can, in one design.
• If you are designing a website specific to an industry, do some research and use principles, colors or shapes used by that industry in the design.
• Locate typefaces and fonts you have not used in the past, or create some.
• Choose at least 15 of your own constraints.
This is just a fun exercise to expand your creativity. Don’t frustrate yourself, if you are having difficulties, try something else.
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