Real-world creativity is dealing with constraints.

A couple of days ago (Sunday, 30th November, 2011) I sat down to talk to some young up-and-coming creatives about how to pitch for, and charge for work, and I was only too happy to dish out my two cents worth.

Then came that question that’s always asked: ‘what do you think about spec-work?’ For those not in the know “spec-work” is speculative work. Pie-in-the-sky thinking. No brief, no client, just a showcase of talent.

Now, I’ve written at some length here about why I believe spec-work is great for the creative mind and should be encouraged, but I’ve never had a look at the flip side of the coin.

Here’s the thing: we work in a world that is full of constraints – technical, logical, fiscal. Spec-work ignores all that in favour of voyages of pure fantasy.

All that freedom goes away in light of production and media budgets, language-barriers, cultural differences, the dreaded “Brand Guidelines,” or “Visual Identity System,” and so on and so forth.

These are all constraints that your creativity will push up against until you turn grey. But, this is the “box” within which you must work. There are no ifs-and-buts about the legal issues concerning depicting minors in certain situations. There is no magic trick that will enable you to produce your epic two minute television commercial on a budget of U$ 10,000 or even 20,000. It can not be done.

The real trick is actually achieving something memorable and beautiful and to the point, within all of the constraints that you will always have imposed on you. And, trust me – having had the less than pleasant experience of wading through the entire Diageo Marketing Code – there can be a hell of a lot of constraints!

But that doesn’t seem to have stopped the teams working on Smirnoff Vodka and Johnnie Walker from doing some truly heroic work.

It’s always very easy to say something can’t be done because of some rule or regulation, but how about exploring what can be done within the regulations? How about not bothering to think “outside the box” and instead thoroughly exploring every nook and cranny of the box you are in instead?

After all, once you venture outside of one box, you’ll only find yourself in another slightly larger, slightly differently shaped one.

And, in truth, the box you really need to think out of isn’t the one imposed by the real-world constraints, it’s more likely one that you have imposed on yourself. Free yourself from that one first.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying don’t do spec-work. I’m saying it’s a lot easier to be “creative” when there are no boundaries. Being creative within a very specific set of rules, now that takes some doing.

Oh, and when a client next asks you to think outside the box, politely tell them that there is no such thing and point them here.

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