Constraints
The minimum condition
You can almost tell which software they were designed in
One brick
To abandon control
Constrained by the medium
The fountainhead of beauty
Freedomless freedom
Hand and brain design
The 1916 Zoning Resolution
Autonomous constraints
When Movable Type ate the blogosphere
Any imaginable shape
A normal wooden pencil
Every exit is an entrance somewhere
When design gets too easy
Design has invariably exhibited styles because some clear limitations on freedom of choice are psychologically necessary to nearly all designers. When design gets too easy it becomes difficult.
Changing constraints
The Constraints Keep Changing
The explicit listing of known constraints in the design program helps here. The designer can periodically scan the list, asking, “Can this constraint now be removed because the world has changed? Can it be entirely circumvented by working outside the design space?”
The momentum of making
Limitations narrow a big process into a smaller, more understandable space to explore. It’s the difference between swimming in a pool and being dropped off in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight. Those limitations also become the basis for the crucial first steps in improvisation. After those, the momentum of making accelerates as ideas are quickly generated without judgment.
Necessity
Loos's need to respond positively to the difficulties he encountered appeared in the errors that occurred during the construction of the Villa Moller. When the foundations were not laid as specified, he could not afford to dig them up and start again; instead, Loos thickened the form of one side wall to accommodate the mistake, making the thickened wall and emphatic side frame for the front. The formally pure properties of Villa Moller were achieved by working with many similar mistakes and impediments Loos had to take as facts on the ground; necessity stimulated his sense of form. Wittgenstein, knowing no financial necessity, had no such creative dialogue between form and error.
“Design” is now “Product”
An Article by Dorian TaylorDesign has very little to do with what tools or methodologies you use, or what your job title is, or what you have a degree in, or even anything like “creativity”; design is about your relationship to constraints. Rather: to what extent are you defining constraints rather than just obeying them? Design is about taking a universe of possibilities and converging onto exactly one outcome. Being handed a set of constraints which you treat like immutable laws of physics (because many of them are) and solving within that envelope is what engineering is. To wit: what most designers are doing most of the time is actually a form of engineering, and engineers are always doing at least some design.
This is because genuine design—the power to define constraints—is a privileged political position within an organization, and not everybody can occupy it. In other words, the “seat at the table” comes first. Design is Steve Jobs infamously dropping an iPod prototype into his fish tank, pointing at the bubbles coming out and yelling at his staff to make it thinner. It doesn’t matter what your title is; Jobs is the designer in that scenario.
Delight is constraints, joyfully embraced
An Article by Craig ModAnd what is delight? For me, delight is born from a tool’s intuitiveness. Things just working without much thought or fiddling. Delight is a simple menu system you almost never have to use. Delight is a well-balanced weight on the shoulder, in the hand. Delight is the just-right tension on the aperture ring between stops. Delight is a single battery lasting all day. Delight is being able to knock out a 10,000 iso image and know it'll be usable. Delight is extracting gorgeous details from the cloak of shadows. Delight is firing off a number of shots without having to wait for the buffer to catch up. Delight is constraints, joyfully embraced.
The Design Diagram
An Idea by Charles Eames & Ray EamesThis Eames drawing, often referred to as the Design Diagram, was created for a 1969 exhibition at the Louvre entitled, What is Design? Charles and Ray mailed it to the exhibition curator to augment their answers to a series of questions she had posed.
Recognizing Constraints
An Article by Jeremy WagnerSuper Nintendo games were the flavor of the decade when I was younger, and there’s no better example of building incredible things within comparably meager constraints. Developers on SNES titles were limited to, among other things:
- 16-bit color.
- 8 channel stereo output.
- Cartridges with storage capacities measured in megabits, not megabytes.
- Limited 3D rendering capabilities on select titles which embedded a special chip in the cartridge.
Despite these constraints, game developers cranked out incredible and memorable titles that will endure beyond our lifetimes. Yet, the constraints SNES developers faced were static. You had a single platform with a single set of capabilities. If you could stay within those capabilities and maximize their potential, your game could be played—and adored—by anyone with an SNES console.
PC games, on the other hand, had to be developed within a more flexible set of constraints. I remember one of my first PC games had its range of system requirements displayed on the side of the box:
- Have at least a 386 processor—but Pentium is preferred.
- Ad Lib or PC speaker supported—but Sound Blaster is best.
- Show up to the party with at least 4 megabytes of RAM—but more is better.
Embracing design constraints
An Article by Adrian RoselliConstraints have been shown to generally improve innovation. Giving targets and parameters helps ensure a team is working in unison. Identifying what is out of bounds can further focus that team.
The Microsoft Sound
A Quote by Brian EnoThe thing from the agency said, "We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional," this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said "and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long."
I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It's like making a tiny little jewel.
In fact, I made 84 pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I'd finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time.
The Elements of Style
- Choose a suitable design and hold to it
- Make the paragraph the unit of composition
- Use the active voice
- Put statements in positive form
- Specific, definite, concrete
Choose a suitable design and hold to it
A basic structural design underlies every kind of writing.
Writing, to be effective, must follow closely the thoughts of the writer, but not necessarily the order in which those thoughts occur. This calls for a scheme of procedure. In some cases, the best design is no design, as with a love letter, which is simply an outpouring, or with a casual essay, which is a ramble. But in most cases, planning must be a deliberate prelude to writing.
The more clearly the writer perceives the shape, the better are the chances of success.
Make the paragraph the unit of composition
As a rule, begin each paragraph either with a sentence that suggests the topic or with a sentence that helps the transition.
More commonly, the opening sentence simply indicates by its subject the direction the paragraph is to take.
Use the active voice
"I shall always remember my first visit to Boston” is better than "My first visit to Boston will always be remembered by me."
Put statements in positive form
Make definite assertions. Use the word not as a means of denial or in antithesis, never as a means of evasion.
"He was not very often on time” becomes “He usually came late.”
“She did not think that studying Latin was much use” becomes “She thought the study of Latin useless."
Consciously or unconsciously, the reader is dissatisfied with being told only what is not; the reader wishes to be told what is.
If your every sentence admits a doubt, your writing will lack authority.
Specific, definite, concrete
Prefer the specific to the general, the definite to the vague, the concrete to the abstract.
Omit needless words
When a sentence is made stronger, it usually becomes shorter.
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentence short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
The principle of parallel construction
This principle, that of parallel construction, requires that expressions similar in content and function be outwardly similar.
Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs in the kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth.Steering by stars that are disturbingly in motion
Here we leave solid ground. Who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, causing them to explode in the mind? Who knows why certain notes in music are capable of stirring the listener deeply, though the same notes slightly rearranged are impotent? These are high mysteries, and this chapter is a mystery story, thinly disguised. There is no satisfactory explanation of style, no infallible guide to good writing, no assurance that a person who thinks clearly will be able to write clearly, no key that unlocks the door, no inflexible rule by which writers may shape their course. Writers will often find themselves steering by stars that are disturbingly in motion.
Design informs even the simplest structure
Design informs even the simplest structure, whether of brick and steel or of prose.
Even the kind of writing that is essentially adventurous and impetuous will on examination be found to have a secret plan: Columbus didn’t just sail, he sailed west, and the New World took shape from this simple and, we now think, sensible design.
Do not overstate
When you overstate, readers will be instantly on guard, and everything that has preceded your overstatement as well as everything that follows it will be suspect in their minds because they have lost confidence in your judgment or your poise.
A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole.
Do not explain too much
It is seldom advisable to tell all.
Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end
The proper place in the sentence for the word or a group of words that the writer desires to make most prominent is usually the end.
The principle that the proper place for what is to be made most prominent is the end applies equally to the words of a sentence, to the sentences of a paragraph, and to the paragraphs of a composition.
Writing is one way to go about thinking
And the practice and habit of writing not only drains the mind but supplies it, too.
Style is not separate from substance
Young writers often suppose that style is a garnish for the meat of prose, a sauce by which a dull dish is made palatable. Style has no such separate entity; it is nondetachable, unfilterable. The beginner should approach style warily, realizing that it is an expression of self, and should turn resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style - all mannerisms, tricks, adornments. The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.
The young writer should learn to spot them - words that at first glance seem freighted with delicious meaning but that soon burst in air, leaving nothing but a memory of bright sound.