Articles, Featured Articles

Creativity is something that designers crave. We feel the need to be creative, and anything that tethers us and keeps us from expressing that creativity is almost assuredly negative. Many designers see boundaries and ‘inside the box’ thinking for those whose minds cannot handle the life without constraints, those who lack the ability to see the world like they do. However, designers are required to see the world through many different eyes, not just their own, and be able to interpret what they see from all those viewpoints. Their single viewpoint is not the only ‘correct’ viewpoint. Quite the contrary, in that, most designers see the world in a vastly different manner from others, and to create products and ideas based solely on their viewpoint would be to exclude a huge segment of the population.

So designers try to interpolate all the data and the viewpoints, and create an innovative product, idea, service, etc., and understandably someone putting limitations on what can and cannot occur can cause tremendous frustration. However, it does not have to be so. Boundaries and standards are not in place to simply stifle the creativity of designers and those trying to be innovative, but rather they are in place because they serve a purpose. That notion specifically is what many designers seem to quickly forget and become frustrated with. As people we are irritated by what we don’t understand, and that should be all the motivation we need (though it rarely is). As designers, it is incredibly important to understand the boundaries that are put in place, and not to give in to our instincts to fight those standards. We have to be willing to put in the time and effort to create a product that is innovative and creative, but that still lies within the outlined standards. It is not so much about always thinking outside the box, but sometimes thinking creatively inside that box. We cannot always (or in fact, rarely) control the circumstances regarding the situations we find ourselves in, or the standards surrounding products we are involved with, so we have to do our best to use those as steps towards a truly unique and innovative product.

As designers we often spend too much time swimming upstream and refusing to compromise our ‘vision’, and that energy could be better used towards creating a better product overall regardless of boundaries and standards. Sometimes our stubbornness can be something that propels us forward, takes us through tough times, but sometimes it can be something that holds us back and causes us to stay focused on the wrong thing. They key to successfully recognizing the differences and reacting accordingly is to understand the reasons for these perceived limitations in the first place. When that is understood, it is much easier to accept them for what they are, and that is merely pieces of a puzzle that you, the designer, needs to arrange properly. When the product, follows the process, is creative, innovative, and unique, not one person is going to care about, or even notice that you had some ‘limitations’ presented to you at the project start.