I’ve been obsessed with the idea that limitation breeds creativity ever since I watched Cassie Evan’s legendary talk in 2019. It’s such a profoundly useful mindset to approach the work we do, whether designing, programming or both.
I was extra delighted that Michelle Barker wrote about how limitation breeds creativity recently in a completely different context: CSS, making simple collages with actual paper and how those lines merged.
There’s not many things I’ve consumed over the years that’s had quite so much of a transformational effect on how I do things as the concept of limitation breeding creativity. That, along with accepting you can’t achieve perfect because perfect is forever subjective. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t chase perfect because that’s how you get better at your craft, but what I’ve accepted is getting down on not achieving this subjective impossibility is counterproductive overall.
Iteration is to nobody’s surprise — based on how my whole design agency is centred around it — is the third piece in this puzzle. The trigger for that was discovering Brendan Dawes’ The Process art in 2020 while I was already in the process of working out a better way to build websites that work for everyone: clients and end-users. Turns out slow is smooth and smooth is fast has been true all along as that process continues every day.
It’s funny how discovering seemingly random pieces of work have this effect. It’s why the web is so good and needs to be protected.
Whoops, turns out I did an accidental blog post on the newsletter, my bad. More links next week!
P.S I can’t thank everyone who pre-ordered or signed up for updates about Complete CSS enough. You’re all the best.
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Until the next issue, take it easy 👋
Andy
