My Response
This was an interesting read for me as it really focuses on the value of rules and limitations. Without context these can have negative connotations but the way Paul Rand describes them makes sense. Without rules or limitations there is no motivation and therefore creations and student work will seem confused and have a disoriented feeling to them. I completely agree with this statement as I have always found that I do my best creative work when given a set of rules to follow. I have had some solid experience in this area as I was part of a competitive, creative-problem-solving team in my school and we would always place high in competitions. On this team we were allowed to pick between 5 different problems that would give us a prompt for a skit and within the 8 minute skit we would have to solve the problem given to us. Limitations for this would include, banned use of a specific material, banning of a simple method of solving the problem, or even the complete abolishing of all dialogue from the skit. These limitations would encourage and motivate the team to think in the most creative ways to solve the issue at hand and rewards were given out to the team with the most creative response to the problem. In graphic design there is almost no limit to what is possible with today’s computers and technology. So, there needs to be rules and limitations to each graphic design project or the design is likely to come out as a mess that was not thought out. This is not always the case but in my opinion I find it more difficult to work without those limitations.
