Partial escape

‘Thinking outside the square’ is one of those irritating cliches that have become part of the verbal baggage of contemporary corporate culture. I often suspect that those using the phrase barely think inside the square, let alone outside it. And yet the concept still has a particular relevance to commercial design in all its forms.

I believe the trick is not so much to think outside or inside the dreaded square, but to occupy that fluid area in between. Therein lies the realm of possibilities.

One of the qualities of good design is that it hovers tantalisingly between freedom and constraint. If it moves too far one way, you have self indulgence and lack of focus. Too far the other way results in boredom. So, increasingly, I see design as a process of breaking out of the box - but not too much! In other words, ‘partial escape’.

After all, we don’t really want to completely escape that box, or square, or whatever you want to call it. For that's our page, our grid, our stage, our monitor, our cinema screen, our canvas. In fact, our principles.

This idea of creating work that exists in a paradoxical space between two opposites is not confined to graphic design alone, but seems to be present in all creative endeavours that stand apart from the crowd. Take music, for instance. You can satisfy a few concertgoers who yearn for the ‘golden oldies’ with music that has a simple beat, obviously defined melodies and pure tonal harmonies. But most audiences today will easily tire of such music. At the other extreme, if your compositions feature cacophonies of sound, constantly shifting tempo and relentless dissonance, you'll clear a concert hall in minutes! Once again, truly exciting music occupies a soundspace somewhere between these opposites. It ruffles your feathers, then it smoothes them down. Then it ruffles them again, and so on.

If I were to get really philosophical about it, I'd say that the reason we respond to this paradoxical art so strongly is because existence itself is intrinsically paradoxical. Perhaps we intuitively recognise the fact that a work of art which presents us with any statement of certainty is not telling us the whole truth.

Jon Puckridge