The creative power of constraints

“I don’t remember ever being forced to accept compromises, but I have willingly accepted constraints.”

— Charles Eames

One of the most marvelous aspects of the human experience is creativity. Yet, for those in the business of creativity, the creative act can be both the most rewarding and the most frustrating experience in life. Sometimes the mind is drenched in free, flowing ideas. Other times, the mind feels just like a desert, producing nothing.

The Eames Institute · Leica CL · 23mm · f/2 · 1/60 · ISO 320

A single factor determining the difference between those two states appears to be constraint. Some often think of creativity as conjuring something out of nothing. However, it is far from that as told in common sayings. “Everything is a remix” — creative work responds to what came before. “Thinking outside the box” — novel ideas acknowledge and break out of previous limitations.

Graphic designer Michael Bierut says, “the problem contains the solution”, a saying he took to heart with his long-running series of posters for the Yale School of Architecture.

Several posters from the series

Constraints are the primordial soup from which creativity arises. These constraints can be imposed on the creator or devised by the creator themselves. Most commonly, they are a combination of both.

Have too many constraints and you get Santa Fe Pueblo Revival architecture — works tightly constrained to ensure uniformity rather than creativity. While beautiful, the Pueblo Revival style will never product something new.

Pueblo Revival in Santa Fe · Leica CL · 23mm · f/10 · 1/60 · ISO 125

Have few constraints and you get the problem of the blank page, offering too much possibility and often paralyzing the creator.

With just the right amount of constraints, creativity becomes almost an inevitability. This phenomenon is best seen in constraints where a specific format encourages a seemingly neverending list of solutions.

pwnisher CG challenge

YouTuber pwnisher runs 3D challenges where he provides a simple 3D animation which artists then take and apply their creativity to. Aside from being required to use the initial 3D animation, no other constraints are given. The results demonstrate how even a single constraint can inspire diverse creative expressions.

Famicase

Famicase is an annual art exhibition held in Tokyo dedicated to imaginary video games. Participants submit ideas from around the world up until the maximum number is reached. Meteor Club then produces the labels and applies them to cartridges displayed in their gallery.

Several of the thousands of Famicase entries

Here the constraints are minimal — choose the cartridge type and color, create art within the label dimensions, and provide a brief description. Each year’s entries are both wildly different from each other and impressively creative.

Borneo Sporenburg

Borneo and Sporenburg are two former harbor docks from the 19th century located north of Amsterdam’s city center. In the 1990s, architecture firm West Eight transformed both into a residential district comprising high-density, low-rise housing.

Each firm was allotted houses to design based on specific constraints:

1. All houses should have a front door onto the street.
2. All houses should have a flat roof.
3. All houses should be the same height at the eaves.
4. No construction of more than three stories.
5. Ground floor must be 3.5 meters high.
6. All houses must have their own outdoor space, integrated into the dwelling in the form of a patio, roof terrace or loggia.
7. The roof landscape must be attractive when viewed from above, from the nearby high-rise blocks.
8. A limited number of materials.
9. Houses to be designed by a variety of architects.
10. The specified plots (for single-family houses) are a standard 16 meters deep, 4.2 to six meters wide and a maximum height of 9.5 meters.

Each architecture firm brought a different vision to these constraints, resulting in nearly 20 different designs.

Nineteen different unit designs. Courtesy West 8.

Of particular note are the houses found on Scheepstimmermanstraat. These 60 units followed the same rules but were sold to owners who each employed their own architects. The end result is a street of houses that all fit into the same physical dimensions but vary drastically in architectural style, mimicking the organic variation of traditional canal houses in central Amsterdam.

Photo courtesy funda.nl

The paradox of constraints

In each example, one entity creates constraints and a group of people responds to them with remarkable creativity. They demonstrate how constraints, when set just right, catalyze innovation.

The paradoxical relationship between restrictions and freedom is the heart of the creative process. The idea that limitations actually expand possibilities appears contradictory at first. Yet, it reveals itself as the fundamental truth in both design and nature. Just as biological innovation is driven by evolutionary pressure, creativity flourishes when faced with specific parameters rather than limitless possibility.

In professional contexts, the question of who creates the constraints becomes significant. They typically emerge from the client’s needs, the limitations of the medium, and self-imposed parameters. Successful creative people don’t merely comply with externally imposed constraints, but transform them through reframing. They adopt constraints as personal challenges rather than external impositions.

These examples inspire how we can apply constraints to our own work. Often lacking externally imposed constraints, we can construct our own. We can collaborate with others or explore mediums that bring new constraints.

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Charles Eames’s distinction between forced compromises and willingly accepted constraints reveals a profound truth — in the delicate balance between structure and freedom lies the sweet spot where creativity thrives.

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Thanks to Q for reading drafts of this.