{"course":{"slug":"visual-storytelling","title":"Making It Say Something","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/visual-storytelling","level":"beginner","track":"create"},"lesson":{"slug":"constraints-are-the-brief","title":"The constraints were true all along; you just found out late","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/visual-storytelling/constraints-are-the-brief","position":5,"of":64,"minutes":8,"answer":"Write the seven constraints (format, viewing situation, production route, both deadlines, split budget, existing assets and the approver) before designing.","keyIdea":"Write the seven constraints (format, viewing situation, production route, both deadlines, split budget, existing assets and the approver) before designing, because each one is a filter that rejects whole classes of idea in seconds rather than days."},"body":{"format":"markdown","text":"## The rework you did not have to do\n\nA designer spends two days on a poster built around a full-bleed photograph with white type reversed out of the dark half. It is good. Then the printer says the job is one-colour on kraft stock, because that is what the budget bought, and the whole thing dies. Nobody hid this. Nobody asked.\n\nConstraints are not obstacles that appear later. They are facts about the job that existed before you started, and the only variable is whether you knew them on day one or day three. Getting them written down is fifteen minutes of work that routinely saves two days.\n\n## The seven to write down\n\n1. **Final format and quantity.** A3 poster, 200 copies. Or 1080×1920 vertical video, under 60 seconds. \"Some social stuff\" is not a format.\n2. **Where it will physically be.** Pasted at eye level in a corridor. Held in the hand. Seen from a car at 40km/h. This decides your smallest legible element more than any other fact.\n3. **The production route and its limits.** Screen print in two colours, office laser printer, a phone screen, a large-format vinyl plotter. Each has a list of things it cannot do: the laser printer cannot do full bleed, the plotter cannot do fine gradients, the phone cannot do 6pt type.\n4. **Deadline, and the real one.** Ask for both: the date they told you, and the date after which it is worthless. A Diwali flyer has a hard second date; an about-page redesign usually does not.\n5. **Budget, split.** Your fee is not the budget. Print, paid media, a photographer, a licence for a typeface or a track: each of these either exists or does not, and a piece designed around a licensed typeface with no budget for one is a piece that will be rebuilt in a substitute font at midnight.\n6. **What already exists and must be used.** Logo files, a colour, a tagline the founder will not part with, previous photography. Ask for the actual files early; \"we have a logo\" and \"we have a vector logo\" are different situations, and finding out on the day of print that the only copy is a 400px JPEG from a 2014 website is a specific and avoidable misery.\n7. **Who approves it, and how many of them there are.** One person is a client. Five people is a committee, and a committee needs a different presentation strategy and a different time estimate. Get the name.\n\n## Constraints make decisions, and that is the point\n\nThere is a real pleasure in an unconstrained brief, and it is usually followed by paralysis. Two colours and kraft stock is not a lesser version of the full-colour job. It is a different problem with a smaller decision space, and smaller decision spaces are faster to search. Some of the most memorable design in the world was made inside brutal limits: one ink, one plate, one week.\n\nThe practical move is to write the constraint list at the top of the working file and treat each item as a filter. An idea that fails a constraint is not a good idea you cannot afford; it is an idea for a different job.\n\n> Figure: The seven constraints, and what each one rejects. Layers, top to bottom: Format and quantity (A3, 200 copies. Some social stuff is not a format.); Where it physically is (Sets the smallest legible element); Production route (One ink kills the full-bleed photograph); Both deadlines (The stated date, and the date it is worthless); Budget, split (Your fee is not the print or the licence); What already exists (A vector logo and a 400px JPEG differ); Who approves it (One person is a client. Five is a committee.). Each line is a filter. An idea that fails one is not a good idea you cannot afford, it is an idea for a different job, and it costs seconds to reject here and two days to reject later.\n\n## The free path\n\nEvery constraint above can be worked inside on free software, and the tool is not usually what is missing.\n\n- Two-colour print separations, spot colours and bleed: **Scribus** does layout and PDF/X export, **Inkscape** does vector artwork and can output spot-colour-safe files. The paid counterparts are InDesign and Illustrator, which job ads will name.\n- Photo work bound to a small palette: **GIMP** and **Krita** both do indexed colour, duotone by hand, and posterisation. **Photopea** runs in a browser on a low-spec laptop and opens PSD files.\n- Video at a fixed length and aspect ratio: **DaVinci Resolve** (free tier), **Kdenlive** or **Shotcut**; **CapCut** on a phone.\n\nWhat you cannot get free is a licensed commercial typeface or a stock photo licence. That is a budget line, and it belongs on the list above so somebody decides before you design around it.\n\n## The limitation nobody mentions\n\nWriting the constraints down does not make them stable. Clients change quantity, dates move, and the founder discovers a new favourite colour. The list is not a contract; it is a record of what was true when you started, and its value is in making a change visible as a change. When item 1 moves from 200 copies to 5,000, screen printing stops being the cheap option and the whole design premise is up for review, and you can say that in one sentence because you wrote the premise down.\n\nSend the list back to the client in an email with the words \"here is what I have understood\". Half the time you will get one correction that saves the job."},"check":{"question":"A client raises the print run from 200 to 5,000 copies. Why does a written constraint list turn this from a small update into a flagged design review?","options":[{"text":"Because a larger run means a larger budget, so the design can now afford more colours.","correct":false,"tempting":"Assumes quantity unlocks budget; the per-unit economics change but the total budget is a separate line that nobody has revisited."},{"text":"Because the route chosen for 200 copies is no longer cheapest at 5,000, and the design premise rested on that route.","correct":true},{"text":"Because 5,000 copies will be seen by a much wider range of people, so the message needs to be broadened and made less specific to survive.","correct":false,"tempting":"Confuses volume with audience breadth; the same 5,000 flyers can be handed to exactly the same kind of person, and broadening the message weakens it."},{"text":"Because more copies means a longer lead time, so the deadline must move.","correct":false,"tempting":"A real scheduling consequence, but it is the smaller one: the list's value here is exposing that the technique, not just the timeline, is now wrong."}]},"prev":{"slug":"the-before-state","title":"You cannot move someone without knowing where they are standing","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/visual-storytelling/the-before-state"},"next":{"slug":"discovery-questions","title":"Six questions, and what to do when they cannot answer","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/visual-storytelling/discovery-questions"},"authorship":"Founder and series editor: Dr Mustafa Mun. Written by AI models to a written standard. Exam keys checked blind by a second model: 3,665 of 3,666 agreed. Academic review invited.","review":{"status":"Draft, open for academic review"},"cite":"Addaly (2026) 'The constraints were true all along; you just found out late', in Making It Say Something. Edited by M. Mun. Addaly. Available at: https://addaly.com/learn/visual-storytelling/constraints-are-the-brief (Accessed: 13 October 2026).","licence":{"name":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"},"reader":{"schema":1,"title":"The constraints were true all along; you just found out late","courseTitle":"Making It Say Something","module":{"index":1,"slug":"before-the-software","title":"Before you open the software"},"answer":null,"keyIdea":"Write the seven constraints (format, viewing situation, production route, both deadlines, split budget, existing assets and the approver) before designing, because each one is a filter that rejects whole classes of idea in seconds rather than days.","hero":{"kind":"figure","figure":{"t":"figure","label":"Figure","figure":{"type":"stack","title":"The seven constraints, and what each one rejects","layers":[{"label":"Format and quantity","detail":"A3, 200 copies. Some social stuff is not a format."},{"label":"Where it physically is","detail":"Sets the smallest legible element"},{"label":"Production route","detail":"One ink kills the full-bleed photograph"},{"label":"Both deadlines","detail":"The stated date, and the date it is worthless"},{"label":"Budget, split","detail":"Your fee is not the print or the licence"},{"label":"What already exists","detail":"A vector logo and a 400px JPEG differ"},{"label":"Who approves it","detail":"One person is a client. Five is a committee."}],"caption":"Each line is a filter. An idea that fails one is not a good idea you cannot afford, it is an idea for a different job, and it costs seconds to reject here and two days to reject later."},"alt":"Figure: The seven constraints, and what each one rejects. Layers, top to bottom: Format and quantity (A3, 200 copies. Some social stuff is not a format.); Where it physically is (Sets the smallest legible element); Production route (One ink kills the full-bleed photograph); Both deadlines (The stated date, and the date it is worthless); Budget, split (Your fee is not the print or the licence); What already exists (A vector logo and a 400px JPEG differ); Who approves it (One person is a client. Five is a committee.). Each line is a filter. An idea that fails one is not a good idea you cannot afford, it is an idea for a different job, and it costs seconds to reject here and two days to reject later."}},"blocks":[{"t":"h2","id":"the-rework-you-did-not-have-to-do","runs":[{"text":"The rework you did not have to do"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A designer spends two days on a poster built around a full-bleed photograph with white type reversed out of the dark half. It is good. Then the printer says the job is one-colour on kraft stock, because that is what the budget bought, and the whole thing dies. Nobody hid this. Nobody asked."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Constraints are not obstacles that appear later. They are facts about the job that existed before you started, and the only variable is whether you knew them on day one or day three. Getting them written down is fifteen minutes of work that routinely saves two days."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-seven-to-write-down","runs":[{"text":"The seven to write down"}]},{"t":"ol","start":1,"items":[[{"text":"Final format and quantity.","b":true},{"text":" A3 poster, 200 copies. Or 1080×1920 vertical video, under 60 seconds. “Some social stuff” is not a format."}],[{"text":"Where it will physically be.","b":true},{"text":" Pasted at eye level in a corridor. Held in the hand. Seen from a car at 40km/h. This decides your smallest legible element more than any other fact."}],[{"text":"The production route and its limits.","b":true},{"text":" Screen print in two colours, office laser printer, a phone screen, a large-format vinyl plotter. Each has a list of things it cannot do: the laser printer cannot do full bleed, the plotter cannot do fine gradients, the phone cannot do 6pt type."}],[{"text":"Deadline, and the real one.","b":true},{"text":" Ask for both: the date they told you, and the date after which it is worthless. A Diwali flyer has a hard second date; an about-page redesign usually does not."}],[{"text":"Budget, split.","b":true},{"text":" Your fee is not the budget. Print, paid media, a photographer, a licence for a typeface or a track: each of these either exists or does not, and a piece designed around a licensed typeface with no budget for one is a piece that will be rebuilt in a substitute font at midnight."}],[{"text":"What already exists and must be used.","b":true},{"text":" Logo files, a colour, a tagline the founder will not part with, previous photography. Ask for the actual files early; “we have a logo” and “we have a vector logo” are different situations, and finding out on the day of print that the only copy is a 400px JPEG from a 2014 website is a specific and avoidable misery."}],[{"text":"Who approves it, and how many of them there are.","b":true},{"text":" One person is a client. Five people is a committee, and a committee needs a different presentation strategy and a different time estimate. Get the name."}]]},{"t":"h2","id":"constraints-make-decisions-and-that-is-the-point","runs":[{"text":"Constraints make decisions, and that is the point"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"There is a real pleasure in an unconstrained brief, and it is usually followed by paralysis. Two colours and kraft stock is not a lesser version of the full-colour job. It is a different problem with a smaller decision space, and smaller decision spaces are faster to search. Some of the most memorable design in the world was made inside brutal limits: one ink, one plate, one week."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The practical move is to write the constraint list at the top of the working file and treat each item as a filter. An idea that fails a constraint is not a good idea you cannot afford; it is an idea for a different job."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-free-path","runs":[{"text":"The free path"}],"role":"free"},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Every constraint above can be worked inside on free software, and the tool is not usually what is missing."}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"Two-colour print separations, spot colours and bleed: "},{"text":"Scribus","b":true},{"text":" does layout and PDF/X export, "},{"text":"Inkscape","b":true},{"text":" does vector artwork and can output spot-colour-safe files. The paid counterparts are InDesign and Illustrator, which job ads will name."}],[{"text":"Photo work bound to a small palette: "},{"text":"GIMP","b":true},{"text":" and "},{"text":"Krita","b":true},{"text":" both do indexed colour, duotone by hand, and posterisation. "},{"text":"Photopea","b":true},{"text":" runs in a browser on a low-spec laptop and opens PSD files."}],[{"text":"Video at a fixed length and aspect ratio: "},{"text":"DaVinci Resolve","b":true},{"text":" (free tier), "},{"text":"Kdenlive","b":true},{"text":" or "},{"text":"Shotcut","b":true},{"text":"; "},{"text":"CapCut","b":true},{"text":" on a phone."}]]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"What you cannot get free is a licensed commercial typeface or a stock photo licence. That is a budget line, and it belongs on the list above so somebody decides before you design around it."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-limitation-nobody-mentions","runs":[{"text":"The limitation nobody mentions"}],"role":"limit"},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Writing the constraints down does not make them stable. Clients change quantity, dates move, and the founder discovers a new favourite colour. The list is not a contract; it is a record of what was true when you started, and its value is in making a change visible as a change. When item 1 moves from 200 copies to 5,000, screen printing stops being the cheap option and the whole design premise is up for review, and you can say that in one sentence because you wrote the premise down."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Send the list back to the client in an email with the words “here is what I have understood”. Half the time you will get one correction that saves the job."}]}],"check":{"question":[{"text":"A client raises the print run from 200 to 5,000 copies. Why does a written constraint list turn this from a small update into a flagged design review?"}],"options":[{"text":[{"text":"Because a larger run means a larger budget, so the design can now afford more colours."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Assumes quantity unlocks budget; the per-unit economics change but the total budget is a separate line that nobody has revisited."}]},{"text":[{"text":"Because the route chosen for 200 copies is no longer cheapest at 5,000, and the design premise rested on that route."}],"correct":true,"tempting":null},{"text":[{"text":"Because 5,000 copies will be seen by a much wider range of people, so the message needs to be broadened and made less specific to survive."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Confuses volume with audience breadth; the same 5,000 flyers can be handed to exactly the same kind of person, and broadening the message weakens it."}]},{"text":[{"text":"Because more copies means a longer lead time, so the deadline must move."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"A real scheduling consequence, but it is the smaller one: the list’s value here is exposing that the technique, not just the timeline, is now wrong."}]}],"order":[3,1,2,0],"why":null},"prev":{"slug":"the-before-state","title":"You cannot move someone without knowing where they are standing","minutes":9},"next":{"slug":"discovery-questions","title":"Six questions, and what to do when they cannot answer","minutes":9}}}