Sometimes people think that the most creativity comes with freedom, but time and again, super interesting and creative things have come from design briefs that apply constraints which oblige what some scholars call convergent thinking - pulling all the "givens" together toward a specified direction.
Imposing constraints may help with the distinction between design and art. If we think of design a the creation of man-made artifacts that can be reproduced, and art as something that can be manmade or found in nature, has no boundaries, and does not need to be reproduced, then design, by definition, has at least one more restraint than art - and creativity is also important in design.
So, my conclusion is that creativity and constraint are not opposing concepts. To demonstrate, My students recently finished a collection, "Wákàtí" with a design brief full of constraints that we developed together. Here is a photo of models wearing the collection. During the incubation and ideation stages they worked with African artist Akirash http://www.artwithakirash.com and researched African art at the Oklahoma State University Museum of art http://museum.okstate.edu/current-exhibitions. The backdrop of the photo is an art piece by Akirash that is hanging at the Student Union.
As a group, we decided to design for a village - young, old, men, women, and children (the children's outfit is not in the photo. They were challenged to incorporate sustainable principles, design for Fall 2016, and to incorporate a value added - the value added ranged from felting onto fabric, to 3-D printing to stenciling to weaving with cut materials to integrating LED lights.
Imposing constraints may help with the distinction between design and art. If we think of design a the creation of man-made artifacts that can be reproduced, and art as something that can be manmade or found in nature, has no boundaries, and does not need to be reproduced, then design, by definition, has at least one more restraint than art - and creativity is also important in design.
So, my conclusion is that creativity and constraint are not opposing concepts. To demonstrate, My students recently finished a collection, "Wákàtí" with a design brief full of constraints that we developed together. Here is a photo of models wearing the collection. During the incubation and ideation stages they worked with African artist Akirash http://www.artwithakirash.com and researched African art at the Oklahoma State University Museum of art http://museum.okstate.edu/current-exhibitions. The backdrop of the photo is an art piece by Akirash that is hanging at the Student Union.
As a group, we decided to design for a village - young, old, men, women, and children (the children's outfit is not in the photo. They were challenged to incorporate sustainable principles, design for Fall 2016, and to incorporate a value added - the value added ranged from felting onto fabric, to 3-D printing to stenciling to weaving with cut materials to integrating LED lights.
Comments
Post a Comment