Design Unbound: How Experimentation Enhances Creativity

By Meena Khalili, Robin Landa, meaghan dee

The most meaningful design often begins when no one hands you a brief. Design Unbound explores self-initiated practice as a source of experimentation and authorship, helping designers move beyond solving assigned problems to identifying questions worth pursuing.

Drawing on the perspectives of three designers and educators as well as featured prominent practitioners, the book presents frameworks, methods, case studies, and project examples that guide readers from observation and curiosity through storytelling, futures thinking, material exploration, and collaboration. Readers learn how to initiate projects, define constraints, sustain momentum, and transform personal or societal concerns into purposeful work.

Written for practitioners, educators, and students, Design Unbound shows how self-directed projects can become laboratories for new ideas, catalysts for professional growth, and contributions to culture. It does not tell designers what to make. It helps them decide what is worth making.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http: //www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 103298838X
• ISBN13: 9781032988382
• Release Date: December 2026
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 226 Pages