Creative constraints: How limits inspire limitless creativity
When my dad worked for an ad agency in the 1970s, a creative director and a copywriter held a junior account manager out of a third-floor window.
There were a few complaints after the incident. There was even a short inquiry. Later, the traumatized account manager left the company.
But in the end, the creatives got away with it.
“The thing is…” Dad said, “This was a world-famous ad agency. In an industry of ideas, the creatives were gods.”
My dad worked in production control. His job was to guarantee that creatives met two restrictions: the client brief and the deadline. Boundaries were needed because these maverick creatives struggled to stay on the mark without them.
It feels paradoxical, but freedom is a killer of creativity. The limits we set are the spark that keeps our ideas focused, and brings them to life.
Read on to find out why creative constraints work in our favour, and how to put them into practice.
Time restrictions drive urgency and innovation
Ever heard the quote ‘A goal without a plan is just a wish’?
This rings true when we consider deadlines. Time restrictions are extrinsic motivators—driving pressure, external accountability, and the push of being on the cusp of your comfort zone. Deadlines provide a cadence, focus, and give a project energy.
There’s a problem though: we know deadlines are important. But we suck at judging them.
Parkinson’s Law shows us this idea in action. It states that ‘Work expands to fill the available time’. So if I set a deadline to fix my showerhead within the next month, the likelihood is that I will be having crappy showers for the next 30 days. If the deadline is more urgent, it’s more likely to happen tomorrow (or at least I will make significant progress). No deadline? No fixed shower.
But a deadline can be a double-edged sword. Hard deadlines in a healthy setting and a healthy mindset can be bold, dynamic, and transformative. But near-impossible demands made for yourself or other people have the opposite effect.
Toe the balance and prioritize: what’s a realistic deadline that encourages accountability and thorough thinking, without falling victim to Parkinson’s Law?
Budgets encourage intentional creativity
"One, Ten, One Hundred" is a Wistia mini-series where a video agency creates three ads for the same product with budgets of $1K, $10K, and $100K. The core question: does more money result in a better ad?
Their conclusion? Well, kind of… but there is an inflection point where additional budget no longer boosts the quality of an idea. There was a notable jump in production value between $1K and $10K, but between $10K and $100K there was not much difference.
Not only that, but the $1K budget ad was hilarious and memorable, and prompted the creators to think DIY about what they could use and make on-set. In other words, a more restrictive budget helped their creativity.
They weren’t relying on high-budget sets, transitions, and animations to save their idea. With some restrictions in budget, you too can focus on bringing the best out of the idea itself, instead of fixing a bad one by throwing money at it.
The next time you want to create a BIG idea, but you don’t have the budget, use the ‘Disney Creative Strategy’ when you’re brainstorming:
Resemblance to Mickey Mouse is entirely coincidental.
The strategy, created by Robert Dilts in 1994, proposes that we separate three stages of thinking from ‘most creative’ to ‘most critical’, instead of shooting down an idea before we’ve had a chance to fully imagine it.
When you are brainstorming, take your ideas through these three mental states first:
The Dreamer: Throw realism and budget out the window. What would you make with no limits? Let your imagination run wild.
The Realist: Decide the most practical, resourceful way to create these ideas. What would you need to make them happen?
The Critic: Why might these ideas not work? Filter your ideas by scrutinizing the details.
With this strategy, you’ll see that some of your biggest ideas are actually still achievable with realistic means and modest budgets. And in an era where people use iPhone-recorded videos to reach millions, your ideas are more than possible.
Wordcounts condense ideas and make them more impactful
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn”
This famous six-word story shows how few words can hold a whole world.
And more recently, bite-sized, short-form content perpetuated by social platforms show us: the fewer words, the better.
Constrained writing is a practice that respects people’s time, and focuses on delivering a message as clear and concise as possible. It’s a framework copywriter’s use to help their words carry more weight.
It can also be beautiful. As Shakespeare wrote, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
If you want to get better at concise writing, use platforms like X or even Instagram stories to edit your ideas down, thinking about the attention of the reader. If you’re looking for more fun ways, try writing haikus — a Japanese poetic form made of three lines: five syllables on the first, seven on the second, and five on the third.
A haiku about how nature can inspire creativity.
Restrained discussion can prompt ideas from the whole group
I’m sure you’ve been in those brainstorms. Rob is doing all the talking again. Mark is messing about with his pen. Hannah has a look on her face like she’s trying not to hang herself. Overall, you leave the room not having contributed, and no idea what was discussed or agreed. Complete waste of time.
It’s a sin not to get the best out of all the talent in the room when we have them gathered. Brainstorms are meant to be where ideas are born, but much of the time, so many ideas are left unsaid and never see the light of day.
“There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas,” writes Susan Cain in her book Quiet, which speaks about getting the power out of introverts, who are roughly one-third of the global population.
What helps these sessions is to have moments dedicated to individual work followed by moments of group discussion. These structures help us overcome biases and give everybody’s ideas the possibility to shine.
A lightning decision jam (yep, fun name) is a brainstorm, where each stage of the requires the following:
At least 3 minutes of silent ideation
At least 2 minutes on silent voting using dot systems
Discussions around prioritization of ideas and workload
The focus should be on an idea that works, not the person who thought of it.
Briefs support precision, execution, and outcome
A writer rarely just ‘writes’. Particularly in online content writing, an idea is fully thought out before it’s executed. This is where a brief comes into play.
A brief is both a plan and a promise. It’s a way to fully consider an idea, who it’s intended for, why it’s needed, and what the outcome should be before it’s created. It’s also usually a way to align between clients and customers before creating an outline.
My adaptation of the ABC content brief from the brilliant Fio of Contentfolks. If you’re a content writer, feel free to use it.
Even before writing this article, I ran it through a brief. A brief is not just a tool for writers. It’s also for marketers, artists, architects, designers, and videographers.
If I ask you to make something, you may not know how to start. But if I gave you a clear brief, we have a plan and a promise.
You can’t polish a…
My dad would sometimes share some other wisdom.
Sure, he’d usually say this to mock someone who’d tried to dress themselves up nice.
“You can’t polish a turd,” he’d sometimes say.
But I think this phrase sits true with our ideas, too.
For an idea to reach its fullest potential or reach the light at all, we can’t rely on more budget, time spent, or more words to explain it.
We need to focus on constraints that give it the energy to exist.
