When it comes to explaining the importance of a brief, I often use the analogy of designing a chair for someone with a bad back. To complete this task successfully, there’s a lot of information you need to know; the details of their back injury for starters. Then you need to carry out research to make sure that the ergonomics of the chair will provide the right kind of support. To attain this information, a designer requires a brief and its as much the designer's responsibility to ask the right questions as it is the client’s responsibility to provide the answers. Without one, it will be pure luck if the chair serves its purpose but the more likely outcome will be a dissatisfied client and a frustrated designer arguing over who foots the bill for the scrapped materials. This may seem very obvious, but in my experience over the last few years, briefs are all too often absent or vague or verbally communicated and this is a recipe for creative chaos.
Firstly, what's a brief and what's its purpose?
Simply put, it’s a document that outlines the details of a project and the problem that needs solving. A brief has two main purposes. Firstly, it’s an excellent reference point for the project as a whole, so it will detail things like the job number, date of the brief, the deadline and the name and contact details of the person who requested the work. These sorts of details are useful for administrative reasons. For example, if the project gets refreshed a year later, you can refer to the brief to find out which Designer worked on it last, and with the job number, you’ll easily be able to locate the editable files. So broadly speaking, the brief is a key part of a well organised creative process. Secondly, it ensures that both creative and client fully understand the problem/task in hand and therefore it acts as a measuring stick for the success of the finished work. This is vital in the subjective creative industry where right and wrong aren’t always obvious and where without clarity and objectives, the creative will be left guessing. They’ll then be likely to miss the mark and if not at their own or their employer’s cost, at the cost of the client.
Creative projects come in different shapes and sizes, and so the briefing process needs to have some flex. For example, the briefing procedure for creating a new brand identity would be very different from briefing the design of a one-page factsheet. The latter is what we often describe as ‘task brief’ whereby there’s less creative thinking involved and instead more design action. So, it might be a relatively simple case of taking the content supplied and presenting it in a way that falls within the parameters of the brand guidelines.
A brief is beneficial not just to the creative(s), but to the client too.
I’ve quite literally seen new client’s wince at the very mention of a brief. They’re busy people often juggling multiple projects and tasks at once, so finding the time to fill out a briefing form and then get on a call to go through it is something they could sometimes do without. At The Launchpad Creative we take the time to emphasise to our clients the importance of this part of the process, that it’s better to measure twice and cut once is an analogy that seems to resonate. Writing a brief doesn’t always have to be like writing an essay, in fact we keep our briefing forms as short, simple and straightforward as possible. Receiving an overload of information can make the scope for creativity feel constrained, so it’s important to try and coax out the right amount of useful information and leave out the fluff. We do this by asking a number of very short, direct questions much like a questionnaire while also leaving space for the client to expand on things if they feel necessary. We also have a different brief for each type of project, so one for branding, one for web design projects, one for simpler task briefs and one for creative projects. In our experience at The Launchpad Creative, most of our clients enjoy stepping away from their usual day to day activities to indulge their creative side, so we always try to sell the writing of a brief as a creative task, which it very much is. When a client is writing a brief for the brand identity of their start up business for example, they're going through the process of articulating their vision which is surely exciting. They'll be making creative business decisions like who the target audience might be, whether the brand should come across as traditional or contemporary, budget or high end and so on. It's a collaborative process too, so when we receive the client's answers to our briefing form, we often challenge some the answers which further develops our understanding of their vision. At the end of the briefing process our clients have something that they can really stand by, that means something, and when designed visuals are presented to them, they have a much clearer idea of what’s working and what’s not. It empowers them to give clear, decisive feedback like “We love how this route looks, but the typeface doesn’t have that sense of tradition that we were looking for”. As opposed to “keep going, you’re getting closer!”
Thanks for taking the time to read this article. We’re all ears in terms of other methods and procedures for the Design/Creative process, so please share your thoughts and ideas with us in the comments section below.
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