{"id":26,"date":"2026-10-30T21:03:57","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T21:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studiolo.example\/designing-with-constraints\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T21:03:57","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T21:03:57","slug":"designing-with-constraints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agilethemes.com\/demo-studiolo\/designing-with-constraints\/","title":{"rendered":"Designing with constraints"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"is-style-lead wp-block-paragraph\">Every good brief has a wall in it somewhere: a budget, a deadline, a printing method, a planning rule, a founder\u2019s favourite color. The work gets interesting when you stop trying to climb the wall and start building against it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the Halden Botanics identity, the wall was letterpress. The client wanted their labels printed by a family workshop that only runs two colors at a time and cannot hold fine detail below a certain size. That ruled out half the ideas on our wall in the first week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Constraints are decisions someone already made<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It helps to treat a constraint as a decision made in advance, usually for good reasons. Two colors means every color has to earn its place. A coarse press means the mark has to be strong enough to survive it. Those are design decisions we no longer have to agonise over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What remains is the interesting part: within those limits, what is the most precise, most characterful thing we can make?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Give me the freedom of a tight brief.<\/p>\n<cite>David Ogilvy<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Three constraints we now add ourselves<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>One typeface per project, until it proves it cannot do the job.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>No color without a role: every color names something.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Design the smallest application first \u2014 the favicon, the label, the stamp.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">None of these are rules. They are walls we build on purpose, so the work has something to push against.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every good brief has a wall in it somewhere. The work gets interesting when you stop trying to climb it and start building against it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7,8],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-process","tag-identity","tag-process"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agilethemes.com\/demo-studiolo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agilethemes.com\/demo-studiolo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agilethemes.com\/demo-studiolo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agilethemes.com\/demo-studiolo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agilethemes.com\/demo-studiolo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agilethemes.com\/demo-studiolo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agilethemes.com\/demo-studiolo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agilethemes.com\/demo-studiolo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agilethemes.com\/demo-studiolo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}