Constraint inspires creativity

I started as an artist and I had a side job moving some heavy boxes for a publishing company. They had just gotten a Mac for their art department, the department that creates the book covers. I was kind of showing the art director a thing or two about how to use a Mac. And one day everyone went out to lunch and I jumped on the computer and designed a book jacket and slipped it in the pile to go to the review board in New York. They picked my jacket and when the art director got back to Boston, he wanted to know who designed it and I said, "Me." He was like, "The box guy?"

The most rewarding thing for me has been this affirmation for me that people are basically good and smart, and if you give them a simple tool that allows them to exhibit that behavior, they'll prove it to you every single day.

We can figure it out, it's not like we all have a disease.

I mean, even when it's really simple, there's so much amazing beautiful creativity that can come out of that.

Creativity comes from constraint.

I think we definitely want to focus on the simplicity aspect because it's something that's built into the culture even here at Twitter. Constraints inspire creativity.