Design constraints

Constraint leads to bad design, and good design
Books can teach you how to write HTML, online tutorials can help you craft your Photoshop and Fireworks skills, thousands of hours of hard work and engagement will provide you with a better understanding of the ins and outs of the Internet and the ways in which people interact with it.
Your job title is meaningless.
I am a designer. I work mainly on the web. I use Photoshop and Textmate daily. I build websites.
Does that stop me picking up a paint brush, spray can or scissors, or camera and camcorder and going out onto the street to obtain different forms of media that I feel may be useful in moulding my final output, the end creation?
No?
If it serves as a valuable asset in creating the final experience, there is no need to be restricted by my job title or the equipment on my desk alone. But constraints also allow us to expand creatively. By creating barriers, we know how far we can go - the lengths to which we can stretch and bend the rules to create something new, something that works within it’s medium whilst evolving beyond the competition, beyond the confines of the original brief or spec.
Make clients happy, make users happy. Everyone’s happy, everyone wins!
If there are no rules in the first place, how can we break them?
However, never forget the difference between art and advertising. Art is personal expression. Advertising serves the needs and purposes of the client. It is to promote a brand, a product, a service or opinions. Advertising makes money. Web design is a form of advertising, an increasingly essential and multifunctional branch of advertising and branding that absolutely cannot be overlooked or underestimated.
But advertising is dead, isn’t it?
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