Blog Posts About: constraints

Test Your Language Skill with UpGoer Five

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Randall Munroe is known for his , which offers hilarious and insightful commentary on technology, geek culture, and more. Awhile back, Mr. Munroe published something very different: an of the Saturn V rocket that took men to the moon.

This was no normal blueprint. Munroe added an interesting constraint: He could only use the 1,000 most-used English words for his annotations. This constraint forced him to think carefully about how to capture these complex mechanisms and features using a completely different style of communication.

blueprint saturn 5

Your Turn: The UpGoer5 Text Editor

This constraint - communicating with only the 1,000 most-used words sparked a small movement. People began to challenge each other to present their work using this method, which is now known as “UpGoer5”.

In fact, a website soon appeared with a for evaluating what words are in the top 1,000 list.

The Challenge

Can you describe your work using only the top 1,000 most-used English words? The text editor will show you what's in or out. !

This post is based on a bonus chapter in our .

Thing Explainer: A New Book By Randall Munroe of xkcd

What if you had to explain something very complex, like a rocket, and only use drawings and the 1000 most-used words in the English language?  

That's the constraint that Randall Munroe made famous a while back when he explained a Saturn V rocket. For example, because the word "rocket" is not in the 1000 words, he called it an "up-goer" and that became the informal name for this kind of communication. You might remember a guest post by Sally James on this blog about the idea.

Mr. Munroe, whose work you may have seen on the web comic xkcd, is set to publish an entire book called Thing Explainer that explains "Complicated Stuff Using Simple Words". In fact, it's only drawings and the 1000 most-used words. I think this kind of constraint is a brilliant idea. It simply eliminates jargon and provides a new (and often hilarious) way to think about complex ideas.

Explore computer buildings (datacenters), the flat rocks we live on (tectonic plates), the things you use to steer a plane (airliner cockpit controls), and the little bags of water you're made of (cells).

Here's an example of the Mars Rover:

Mars Rover Randall Munroe - Thing Explainer

Want to test your skills in using the 1000 words? Try it here.

Here's the cover:

Thing Explainer Book

 

Find out more about the book.

Thanks to Kottke.

How Constraints Help Common Craft Videos

 

Since our first video, Common Craft style has been defined by a specific set of materials and processes. You could say we work within a set of constraints.  While the word “constraints” sounds limiting, we’ve always found them useful and, paradoxically, liberating. According to the article linked below, there’s now a scientific explanation.
 
Johan Lehrer recently wrote an article called Need to Create? Get a Constraint wherein he looks at the results of psychological experiments that show how constraints or obstacles change the way we look at the world.  The basic idea is that being limited or constrained in our approach to solving a problem opens our minds to a more global perspective and helps us see connections we would not have seen otherwise.
 
According to the scientists...
Consistently, these studies show that encountering an obstacle in one task can elicit a more global, Gestalt-like processing style that automatically carries over to unrelated tasks, leading people to broaden their perception, open up mental categories, and improve at integrating seemingly unrelated concepts.
 
This seems to explain why I find constraints to be liberating. In approaching a new video, we do not have every option on the table.  Common Craft Style is, in some ways, a system of constraints.  For example, we only use a few items in Common Craft videos - a whiteboard, paper cut-outs, human hands, markers, etc.  These are material constraints.  We don’t use music - feature constraint. Our videos are never over four minutes long - a time constraint.  Our characters don’t have faces - an emotional constraint.
 
These are all examples of obstacles.  Constraining our work in this way means that we can remove a lot decision making and administration and replace it with other kinds of creativity.  Our videos may work better because we don’t have to find the right music, the right animation style, the right facial expressions or models.  We can stop worrying about a big chunk of the creative process through constraints and focus on what matters most to us: the explanation. 
 
If you're working on a creative project, consider how constraints may change your perspective.  It may be that limiting yourself to black and white photos or only one kind of brush may highlight an aspect of the project you would not have seen otherwise.