Restrictions

* [...] RESTRICTIONS, someone said that design is always the product of a lot of restrictions – Charles Eames I think, or maybe it was Charlie Chaplin – but that's exactly how it is. you can't overstate the role played by restrictions. But not only the ones that come with the job, I mean the given ones, the content, the budget, the time, your own limits, even the expectations of the client or whoever you're working with. They all restrict you. But I think you have to then introduce a set of extra restrictions based on these, that in a way protect you from them. I think it's here that you in fact find all the decisions you need. The size, the format, whether to use colour or only black and white, whether to use images and type or just type.

It's a way of setting up rules to the game you're about to play.
Rules that create the game.

And the clearer the rules the more fun it is in fact to play. [...]

* From Dot Dot Dot 12, page 69

Assignment asked students to pair up with a partner in class and come up with a series of 10 rules for how you will make an 11”×17” poster. The only content permitted on this poster are the rules themselves or the result of following them. The rules could be highly specific or more open to interpretation. Students had to exchange rules with their partner and create a poster based on each others rules.