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>> gratuitously add to the complication or cost of the project itself. The emphasis is always to understand the client, the business and then from there the brief. The constraints which are created from a brief actually provides perspective of the overall intention of the project and through this perspective, we are able to eliminate unnecessary options to the plan. This process of elimination creates focus in design, and that’s truly where we can begin to be creative. We know what we don’t need to do and so can be more focused, because as creatives the desire is always to want to do more. Most people hate constraints but as designers constraints are very important to give us creative focus. The worst brief is the one that sets not parameters, or is too open because from there a million ideas can emerge but which one do you actually focus on and try to do? It leaves things open to a lot of assumptions, and a lot of double work which inevitably also drains the client as well. Q: How do you harness your creativity and does coming up with designs for office space specifically limit or expand your creative opportunities?
A: If you are approaching it from a purely artistic sense it would be easy to state that yes the creative opportunities are narrower. But the fact is that as interior designers, our role is to create value and because we work with parameters, with limitations, we are empowered to be a lot more focused in what we do. The more that you understand the objective of the project, the more you are able to properly apply your creativity. In Malaysia, where working cultures can sometimes be relatively conservative, office designs occasionally start on a basis of being very generic. With budgets which are really tight. Many corporate customers are looking for very traditional solutions, some of which do begin to feel somewhat out of date. So what we like to do is encourage our clients to place emphasis on how they work, and from there consider how they can make their work place a better place to work in. How can we make that experience better? How can we make people communicate better? How can we make people enjoy work better? How can we get performance out of people via creativity and great design? So what is essential is that we remain subjective in our creative counsel, because it isn’t about what we want after all. It’s about un-