Image by Keith Chapman.

Contrary to basic intuition, complete freedom of design can greatly hinder creative design. Think of it this way. In your personal life, outside of your business or job, you can pretty much design or write whatever you want, at any time (non-competes withstanding). Total freedom of design. No constraints. Every possible idea is out there. Sit down with your sketchbook, your blinking cursor, or your canvas with nothing in mind. Now draw, write, or paint a masterpiece immediately. It’s difficult. You may end up with a doodle, an averagely boring sentence, or a blob of paint at best. Well, if this happens, then I guess you have indeed started something – a scribble, a theme, or a background but not very inspiring. Worst case, you remain staring at a blank page, screen, or canvas.

However, if you apply constraints within a scope of even a loosely defined project, you get a start, an inkling, or a basic concept no matter how primitive. The nice thing is that almost every project you get assigned or assign yourself will have built in constraints by the very definition of the project having some scope.

Now here is the catch. I strongly believe that the stronger the constraints, the more creative the result. Hear me out. This is counter-intuitive. A very loosely defined project scope leaves a large world of flexibility and ideas out there as candidates for the one result needed. Sifting through those ideas, heck, even generating those ideas is a daunting task and chances of you stumbling on a flash of brilliance is slim at best. Tighten the parameters on a design or scope and you limit the ideas and develop guardrails for your thoughts. This means focus. This means directed thoughts, condensed energy brought to a smaller concept which in turns mean that creative energy is no longer dispersed across a vast landscape of infinite possibility but driven towards a defined purpose.

Ideas are like a gas and the concept or project scope is the vessel containing that gas. Put those ideas into a very large vessel and you get very little pressure on the concept, little interaction, nothing noticeable. Make that concept a very small vessel and you get high energy interactions creating a very noticeable pressure. Perhaps you can make the vessel too small and leave no room for the gas at all… a vacuum… no room for ideas but that more or less defeats the purpose. That means the concept or project is complete and requires no creativity at all in the first place.

Here, try it for yourself. Whatever your art is… draw an equivalent. Draw, write, sculpt, design the following and see how your creativity increases with constraints. I’ll choose drawing for this example.

1. Draw a dog in a scene.

2. Draw a Dalmatian at a fire house.

3. Draw an older, aging Dalmatian named Buster at a frantic brick fire house in Queens, NY as the alarm bells are ringing loudly at 2AM.

I hope you find the level of detail in your drawings goes up as you consider each of the above project scopes or better the style of your drawings changed dramatically. This is usually where the nay-sayers come in and say “you’ve removed all creativity by defining so much”. Possibly, from one perspective in the sense of raw art, maybe. Maybe. But consider this. I did not specify what style, colors, materials to draw on or with, or many other important artistic parameters. You can certainly create a wonderfully creative work in the first and second project scopes but magic happens at the third and it is often quicker to arrive. Greatness is attracted to a well defined project. Also, consider that in most areas of creativity, we are trying to bring in some commercial value one way or another so arriving at the “one” early in the process has huge benefits.

So, do yourself a favor and next time you are assigned a project or you assign yourself a creative project, demand that as much detail as possible be defined before you start to create. Give yourself some sacred cows and golden handcuffs. Limit your parameters deeply and see what emerges quickly.

And one final tip. In my personal career, I have found great innovation, ideas and design emerge freely when I fictitiously add constraints to my project when I don’t get enough definition. You will know you do not have enough definition when you find yourself staring into space or that blank page for too long. Add your own constraints. For example, if you are designing a washing machine. Set a design goal whereby you cannot use any screws in the design. Now start the design. That constraint is unrealistic (most likely) but keeping your energy within that guardrail will prove to demonstrate amazing results. You rethink the norm. You force your energy into new areas and something you could never have thought of any other way surfaces immediately. Hold true to your constraints until that idea emerges. If it doesn’t add more constraints. The washing machine cannot use any metal material. No screws. No metal. Yikes… but these constraints free previously held energy. Now an idea emerges that has no screws and no metal. You redesigned something and it could actually be revolutionary. Now that you have that, release the constraints and get to the commercial, manufacturable and marketable design but with that one nugget of an idea to make the entire product revolutionary. It works. Try it and provide some feedback! I would love to hear if this helps you in your mission.

Now go. Create. ~ The Mission Creative