Rules are everywhere. They are there to avoid chaos and define a common understanding. In civilisations rules are the main principle of it existence. They are defined so we can live together, move around savely and solve differences between each other. There are rules for almost everything, some written and some unwritten common knowledge. We learn them at young age and apply them throughout our lives, sometimes challenging or breaking them to define new and better rules. They are born out of thousands of years of civilisation and thus still change every day.

My main focus is on multimedia design and I see many rules every day in many blogs, books, classes etc. They define what is best for the user and how a designer should live. They give a designer a common blueprint on how to design the best medium for the message and/or fun. This creates standards so users can easily understand what they are seeing or working with. For example in the world of webdesign there are many rules on where the menu should be, how links should look like, how big images should be, which fonts you should use etc. The same thing exists for every medium.

But these rules define a thin path to walk for designers, the outcome is an average type of website, movie, game, musictypes, genres, magazines etc. They define a standard in which we could make sense of communication in this information age but it also creates mediocrity. Rules give new designers some quick rules so they can begin early with designing. When designers advance they begin to challenge and break these rules to see where the limits are so they can find new groundbreaking designs. They begin to understand what is the message behind these rules and look deeper into the subject itself. Rules in design are not to be used as guidelines, but as a mean to gain perspective.

I think as a good designer you shouldn’t look at rules but trust your instincts. A good designer can immerse itself in the audience/user and feel what is best and what distracts. They are not busy by thinking in basic rules of limitations but look at the broad scope of possibilities. Rules tend to let you only watch in one direction but lets you forget the sideroads. Rules limit creativity.

Something that is dominated by rules are presentations. They are all about a certain structure, way of behaviour, way of using powerpoint slides, a certain timing, a kind of thinking, a kind of location etc. Many presentations I saw were based on working down a list of points and the audience was in a certain mode to record the bulletpoints into their brains. I never believed in those standarized rules, they tend to push you in a certain role and standard which is easy forgotten in the memory of other presentations. If you really want to grab somebodies attention look at what gets that person on the edge of its seat. Do something unexpected that fits the message. Maybe you should get rid of the powerpoint and do something theatrical. Maybe you shouldn’t be standing in front of the audience in a standard lecture room but bring the audience to a nice garden. Possibilities are endless but somehow most people always look at the same standard way of bringing the message.

Oh and you know what you have to the with the rule above in bold.

Update:
I discovered a nice discussion in some blogposts of functioning form I was saving for later. It seems to deal with the points I made in the above post: Design Patterns part 1-4