CREATING A BRIEF

We have seen creative design briefs that were an inch thick and others no bigger than a soundbite.

We tend towards brevity.

The more important the task, the more effort should be spent making the objectives clear and the task simple.

When we create a design brief for our clients we follow this format.

1 Why

What is the basic design task? Why is it needed? What are the implications of success / failure? Has it been attempted before, have competitors anything to learn from?

2 Where

What media is to be used, print, environment, internet? What is the life expectancy of the result?

3 Who

Who is the project aimed at? What do you know about them, their perceptions and expectations?

4 When

Using the staged process, create a simple project schedule with decision points at the end of each task (this helps budgeting too!)

This time scale has to be realistic. If not you could face higher costs for extra resources and out of hours work. Remember to add time for internal decision making and approvals.

Failing to plan,
is planning

to fail

Alan Lakein