There is a very thin line between ‘Consistency’ and ‘Creativity’

During my all years I have always been confused about being consistent in designs and being creative at the same time. It has been a very troubling phenomena for me during these years. But I find a way to break it down with some rules. But first of all let us understand what is the meaning of Consistency and Creativity.

Consistency — a logical coherence and accordance
It is an environment in which user gets an unified experience in a product with respect to elements, components, interactions, patterns, transitions and user experience to achieve best results. Consistency creates familiarity, and familiar interfaces which are naturally easy to use. It reduces cognitive load of user experience. If the designs are consistent all interactions and functions look smooth and beautiful. Consistency is divided into two categories: External and Internal. External consistency refers to your UI’s consistency with other products while internal consistency within itself.

Creativity — the use of imagination or original ideas to create something new
To generate something out of the box or innovating something new is creativity. Designers go a very long way in search of innovations and new things but they always fall short of goals as they do not know how to be creative while being consistent.

Designers should really understand the meaning of creativity with consistency. It is a very thin line to watch out for.

I give you an example. Have you seen any animation movie? Let us take some movie characters of Despicable Me 2.

Please have look at the male and female characters. Let us discuss their consistent features first. Both have the same standing stance as humans have. Body postures and body parts are according to the rules of human body. Now let us look for creativity in both. Male has a very long nose, big fat face with a very flat bald head, big upper body with very thin legs which looks different and interesting. On the other hand female has small face, big eyes, bold nose, very thin hands with thin body. So both the characters have different features which is being creative but they are consistent with the principles of human body.

This is how you can work with both factors.

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