Constraints and Creativity

Humanized > Weblog: Web 2.0: Is Converging Towards the Desktop Good?: "Marissa Mayer, the Google VP for User Experience, said it well: 'When people think about creativity, they think about artistic work -- unbridled, unguided effort that leads to beautiful effect. But if you look deeper, you'll find that some of the most inspiring art forms, such as haikus, sonatas, and religious paintings, are fraught with constraints. They are beautiful because creativity triumphed over the 'rules.' Constraints shape and focus problems and provide clear challenges to overcome. Creativity thrives best when constrained.'"

landscape that feeds his soul

I just watched this show on KUED. I really enjoyed it. The images and the phrase "landscape that feed his soul" from the following paragraph stuck with me. They reminded me of fall drives in Southern Utah.

"There were many, many artists who at that time, responded in one way or another to the war. Some turned to modernism because they didn’t want to paint anything that resembled in any way the world, this corrupt world that we lived in. Dixon, however, that’s when he becomes all the more determined to go back into that landscape that feeds his soul."

"Maynard Dixon: To the Desert Again," To see more of Dixon's paintings go to Maynard Dixon Collection at the BYU Museum of Art.

not trying to do too much

"Steve made some very interesting observations very early on about how this was about navigating content," Ive told The New York Times. "It was about being very focused and not trying to do too much with the device -- which would have been its complication and, therefore, its demise. The enabling features aren't obvious and evident, because the key was getting rid of stuff."

Ive told the Times that the key to the iPod wasn't sudden flashes of genius, but the design process. His design group collaborated closely with manufacturers and engineers, constantly tweaking and refining the design. "It's not serial," he told the Times. "It's not one person passing something on to the next."

Robert Brunner, a partner at design firm Pentagram and former head of Apple's design group, said Apple's designers mimic the manufacturing process as they crank out prototypes.

"Apple's designers spend 10 percent of their time doing traditional industrial design: coming up with ideas, drawing, making models, brainstorming," he said. "They spend 90 percent of their time working with manufacturing, figuring out how to implement their ideas."

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"Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like," Jobs told the Times. "That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."

Leander Kahney, "Straight Dope on the IPod's Birth," Wired News, 17 Oct 2006 via signal vs noise