Our Own Design Discovery

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What is Creative Freedom?

Most importantly, we learned what creative freedom really is. True, it is expression but it's not without limits. Think of nature, itself. It's the purest form of creative freedom. It can do whatever it wants, grow where it chooses but still there are very distinct patterns, colors, sizes, and forms that nature takes. That's why a rose knows it's a rose. A lily knows it's a lily. Apple trees only grow apples and pear trees, pears. The dogwood only grows so high, but the Sequoia reaches the skies. Each has the freedom to stretch but knows, too, how to fit in its environment.

Think of it another way. It's a lot like driving a car. When you first learn the basics, you have to learn the laws of the land. You stop on red and don't go over the speed limit. You also have to learn how the car, itself, works. Push in the clutch, shift gears, ease in the accelerator. You have to get it all down straight until, before you know it, it all just becomes a part of you. The rules and mechanics become such second nature, so ingrained you barely have to think them through. You just know. It's then and only then that you can venture off to the high mountain passes, drop the gears down a couple and zip around the curves. For a 16-year-old who just got their license, this would be suicide. But to a seasoned driver, they know how far to push it — what they and the car can handle without going over the edge — and it's total bliss. They can bend a few rules, push the speed, and exercise the creative freedom to drive.

Applying It to Design

When we design this way, we can use our creativity but have enough understanding of what really works and doesn't. So ingrained in us, we can bend a couple rules — throw in extra fonts or elements that stretch design conventions — but never really go too far.

Limits are good. We need healthy boundaries to properly define ourselves. When we decided to go with brown and blue, that was our first mistake. We did it because it was trendy. Because that's what everyone else was doing. But it wasn't us. Probably one of the biggest lessons learned was that the first step in discovering who you are is discovering who you are not. It's then that you can start to see what really defines your image.

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