Can this be the most important part of the design process?
Creating a brief, without one, the designer is sailing into the ocean without a map or flying a plane with no radar or communication.
I like the plane analogy that I use when I am setting goals in my personal life and wonder if It could be used as an example for this project..
If a long haul plane happens to go off course by 1 cm, it will end up 100 miles from its original destination. I use this analogy when I am setting goals, it keeps me on track. Could it be the same with a brief, if the designer doesn’t interpret the brief correctly by compiling the correct information or asking the right questions, could he or she also go off course by 100 miles? Saying that though, I guess sometimes going off track isn’t always a bad thing, it depends how open or closed the brief is or how much flexibility the designer has.
Let’s look into the anatomy of a brief and try and break it down.
To start, we were asked to manage three briefs by reading and analysing them. The example questions for this brief are:
What are you being asked to do?
How will the client judge a successful outcome to the brief?
What are the keywords?
a few other example questions given on the report are..
• What the client wants the work you are doing to achieve
• Who your target audience is
• Where and how it will be reproduced
• Whether there are any restrictions as to colours you can use
• Whether you need to incorporate illustrations, photographs or diagrams and who will
supply these
• The timescales – when they want to see the initial ideas, the proofs, when the artwork
goes to print and when the finished job is distributed
• There may be a budget you need to work to, particularly if you are buying print as well
I like these example questions and thought it would be fun to prioritise the top 4 but honestly feel like they are already in order:
1- What are you being asked to do?
2- What the client wants the work you are doing to achieve?
3- Who your target audience is?
And my personal favourite question..
4- What are the keywords.
Why?
Because I think keywords are straight to the point, and when I see a keyword I instantly have an idea of what the brief is about. Keywords are great because if used correctly the client can instantly tell the designer who the audience is and what we are telling them. I am aware that websites rank higher when the site has the right amount of keywords aimed at a very particular audience, so when a very specific term is searched on google, that site will appear. Could this be the same for graphic design and the correct use of keywords when used in a brief?
Sure thing.
The correct short and long-tail keywords are vital for a designer to better understand the brief in hand.
“I keep six honest serving-men (they taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.”
I am going to keep in mind this great quote by Rudyard Kipling and slightly alter the example questions above to help me break down the first brief.
These are 3 competition-style briefs.
Brief 1
“Create packaging for Quaker’s new ‘Chilled Creamy Oats’ product for young women
looking for a truly delicious healthy snack. The target audience is young women juggling
many jobs and priorities every day. They like to eat well but also love treats and hate
feeling hungry. They like the idea of oats for their natural goodness but find the idea of
eating them bland and unappealing“
First of all, I wanted to follow the design process firstly by identifying both short-tail and long-tail keywords in which I have underlined above.
Straight away I can see from underlying key parts of the brief that the client has a strong interest in benefiting young woman that are very busy, that still want to live a healthy lifestyle but hate the thought of bland and unappealing oats. This audience wants to have a delicious healthy snack that they can have on the move that is going to fill them up without the guilt of potentially putting on weight.
The client is going to look for a good response from the designer so if I was to put myself in the designer’s shoes I would straight away know that the client is looking for a great packaging that promotes creamy oats to young woman that live a healthy lifestyle, but loves a cheeky snack on the side. I would personally love to see light pastel colours, with a few different shades of pink, displayed as a wavy shape across the bottom, blending into cream and brown towards the middle of the design where a bowl would be sat on top of the waves as if it is resting in the middle of the ocean. The shapes would be separated into layers as if they are floating on top of each other.
I think this design gives the oats a light feeling hence why it is sat in the ocean, and the waves give the image a beautiful creamy texture.
I would love to throw in a design where inside the bowl there would be a woman sailing with all her priorities displayed as images i.e baby, work, bills and keeping fit. I feel like the calm creamy ocean would give the design a light healthy feel and the bowl sailing across it with the woman busy inside will give the design a slowed down feel in the woman’s head.
I could get carried away but as long as the design is in line with what the brief asks i.e company guidelines and values, then the response should be great and as long as the design is eye-catching and is laser-focused at busy young professional woman that are looking for a delicious treat.
Next I thought to give the ‘W’ questions a crack and see what I come up with.
Who, Why, What, Where, When and How.
Who is your target audience?
Young woman juggling many jobs and priorities every day, but also want a delicious healthy snack that is going to fill them up on the go, without feeling guilty that they will put on weight. Why the client wants the work you are doing to succeed?
Because it is important for the nature of this design to stay inline with Quakers values, and help Quakers become an influencer for this type of market, so potentially they can create more new healthy lifestyle products aimed at young busy woman.
What are you being asked to do?
Create packaging for Quakers new ‘Chilled Creamy Oats’.
Where does the target audience hang out?
A busy young woman with many priorities so at work, taking their kids to a nursery or around the house carrying out jobs.
When will the design be complete?
This a question that would be agreed on between client and designer. It isn’t just the final design that would require deadlines, a timeline would be put in place for ideas, mockups, concept designs, proofs, printing and publishing.
How will the client judge a successful outcome to the brief?
If the design is in line with the design brief we shouldn’t have a problem. Does the packaging meet the company’s guidelines? Are the values of the company displayed in the design? Have you tested the market, does it attract the right audience?.
A few other questions I would like to ask would be..
What is the colour scheme? What text do you want visible? What typography do you want to use? What are the dimensions of the packaging? Where will it be sold?
Brief 2
“Most of us have experienced a long rail journey – we witness the dramatic contrasts of
the changing landscape, the inter-connections at various points along the way; various
people embark and disembark; the dynamic is ever-changing… finally, we reach our
destination.
This brief challenges you to take a metaphorical journey on the theme of connections.
Explore the theme as broadly as possible and take us on a journey that might link,
amongst other things – people, events, philosophies, theories, objects, movements,
inventions, history, literature, etc. Your journey is only limited by your own imagination
and the quality of your research – surprise us with the juxtaposition of your selected
themes but be sure to communicate to the viewer the ‘connectedness’ of the thinking
within your design. Define your market, and how you will target it”.
For brief 2 the first task I carried out here was to try and understand the brief more clearly so I underlined important parts of the text.
The second task I carried out was highlighting the short and long-tail keywords that give the brief the most meaning.
The third task I decided to go straight to the ‘W’ questions and try to break down the brief even more.
Who, Why, What, Where, When and How.
Who is your target audience?
I like the openness of this brief and how it gives the designer a broad variety of themes to choose from for its audience, but as long as the core concept of the brief is met, that being, metaphorically speaking, the connectedness and linking of 2 or more relationships. An example of this could be the link between people and movements and their similarities or differences. Could the audience for this brief be people who like to dance? A mixture of people and movements?
Why the client wants the work you are doing to succeed?
The client wants to focus the attention of the audience on connection, and if done correctly, I as the designer would create something that attracts a certain audience, meaning more traffic to what the company is offering.
Also, time and money could potentially be very valuable to this client, so if my design isn’t up to scratch, provisions will have to be made, meaning more time and potentially loss of money because if my design is part of a marketing campaign that is ready to go live, if my design isn’t ready then the campaign will get held back.
What are you being asked to do?
I am being asked to come up with a concept that promotes the theme of connectedness. The client is asking the designer to be thorough with research, to stay in line with the theme of connection and use it to look at the differences and similarities of 2 or more subjects by putting them side by side, linking them together and seeing what else can be connected to these 2 subjects. The client is asking me to define the market and come up with a way to target them.
Where will you find inspiration for your design?
In the brief, it mentions ‘people, events, philosophies, theories, objects, movements,
inventions, history and literature‘. Although these are only examples I feel like the client for this brief wants a lot of focus to be on culture and the way certain things are linked together. With this in mind, I would look for inspiration in museums, I would also look for inspiration on pinterest, google images and the google arts & culture page because they have a great timeline where you can see all kinds of art right through time from bc to present day, the journey is quite fascinating.
When will any problems arise?
It is important for all worst-case scenarios to be thought out right at the start of the design process so that they can be addressed right away. Problems and issues will always appear no matter what but if a number of them can be predicted early on and a solution found, then the design process can be much smoother.
How will the client judge a successful outcome to the brief?
For the design to be successful, the client would want to see the design communicating visually to the viewer in a way that emphasises connectedness. The client would also want to see a theme that is clearly portrayed in the finished design.
I would also ask questions like..
Can you show me examples of what you are asking in other design that you have found? What are your values and what inspired this brief? What is the goal for this design work and what are you trying to achieve?
One more thing I would have done as the designer is to create a mind-map for each keyword, and then branch out to see where it took me and what I could link together.
Brief 3
“To raise awareness of the risks of underage drinking and contribute towards a cultural
change in society’s attitude towards alcohol. The purpose of the Department for Children. Schools and Families is to make this the best place in the world for children and young
people to grow up… to make children and young people happy and healthy and help
them stay on track.
With a core proposition of ‘Alcohol leaves you (or your children) vulnerable’, the
campaign will urge parents to talk to their children before they consider drinking, to help
avoid vulnerable situations. The messages to young people will get them to think about
the effects of drinking.
Creative ideas should use the campaign identity ‘Why let drink decide?’ to extend the
campaign’s reach and specifically target young people aged between 13 and 16. We are
open to ideas about the media or format you think is most appropriate to reach the
target audience.”
So straight away after using my underlining and highlighting technique that I created in the last brief, I was able to break down the brief and understand it better.
I underlined key points and highlighted important short and long-tail keywords.
Who, Why, What, Where, When and How.
Who is your target audience?
My target audience is the parents of young people aged between 13 and 16. This brief is targeted at the parents of people of a young age, who are much more likely to start experimenting with alcohol.
Why the client wants the work you are doing to succeed?
This is a powerful campaign and designed to help encourage young people to not drink. If the designer can come up with a campaign that resonates with parents and encourages them to do better for their children by urging them not to consider alcohol, then we have a successful campaign. It is a campaign that potentially could better the world and in the eyes of the client, if those goals are met then the client is sure to be happy.
What are you being asked to do?
With ‘Alcohol leaves you (or your children) vulnerable’ in mind this brief is asking the designer to come up with a campaign that urges parents to talk to their children before they consider drinking. The campaign identity is ‘Why let drink decide?’ and this will be used to carry the campaign. The main goals for this campaign are to raise awareness of the risks of underage drinking and to encourage a better, happier and healthier world for children to enjoy when they grow up. The most important outcome for the client here is to help young people stay on track, question drinking and help them understand the effects of drinking.
Where would you find inspiration for this campaign?
As this campaign is focused on underage drinking, firstly I would look at other campaigns that have been running in the past to do with this topic. I would secondly send out surveys on social media targeted at parents and see what concerns they have about their children drinking alcohol. The third thing I would do is then perhaps set up talks at schools, to see what opinions children had towards underage drinking.
When will any problems arise?
I personally think sometimes if we were to ask young people to do something, they would do the opposite because they think it’s cool in front of their friends to break the rules. It is important for the message to be lightly put across to urge parents to not put pressure on their children but to just make them aware of the effects of drinking and how it can make them vulnerable, unhappy, unhealthy and fall behind in school.
How will the client judge a successful outcome to the brief?
The brief has a strong focus on the intended outcome, to urge parents to talk to their children about underage drinking. If these measures are clearly put across in the campaign. Then the client would be happy and then publish it out into the world and then it’s always good to get feedback and make provisions accordingly, but as long as the designer initially puts a great campaign forward to the client and ticks all the right box, it’s then down to the response from the public to see what needs changing or keeping.
Reflection
The first thoughts I had on this section came from a slightly nervous place, I read through section 2 on problem-solving and at first, I was like oh wait, I have to work to a brief already, so early on in the course. But those thoughts came from a place of fear and worry that I’m not going to be good enough to solve problems within a brief, because this is the first time in my life that I have been presented with these ideas and concepts. It wasn’t until I started writing, I felt like it came to me naturally, understanding what the client wanted and what they were asking of me. I came to understand that the first and most crucial part of being a graphic designer is to understand a brief, to be able to break it down to its core elements and solve all of the problems within it.
I first figured out an easier way to understand the brief, I underlined the most important parts of the brief and then followed that by highlighting short and long-tail keywords that I thought described what the client was asking in 1 or 2 words.
Following this method, I formulated questions based on what I underlined and highlighted in the brief. I based my questions on Rudyard Kipling’s poem which reads –
“I keep six honest serving-men (they taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who”
In the order of Who, Why, What, Where, When and How I wrote down questions that I would ask myself or the designer to make sure that I have all the information I need to meet the requirements of each brief. I found that using the right questions is crucial, not only graphic design to get to the bottom of what the brief is asking but also in my personal life, If I am working on myself and trying to improve certain parts of my life, I find being honest and using the right questions can really inspire me and make me a better human being. Is questioning the most important and crucial part of graphic design?, I think so, for someone to be a great graphic designer, they also need to be great at asking the right questions.
Say I was the graphic designer and I was approached with each of these 3 briefs, I think the one I would enjoy the most would have to be brief 1. I found out from my girlfriend who works for a branding company that there are two types of briefs, an open brief that provides general guidelines and accepts a wider range of possible outcomes. The second type of brief is closed, meaning that the end result must be more specific to what is required. I found out more information on this when searching the web and came across this site https://bit.ly/3gHoIRt.
I personally feel that going for brief 1 would allow me to explore my imagination on a deeper level because I know Quakers well and can relate to the audience because I also juggle a lot of things in the day and sometimes struggle to keep my energy up, I like to stay healthy and to have a snack that I could grab on the go that would fill me up, then I would definitely be interested in buying the product.
From this realisation of being personally relatable to the brief, I think I could come up with pretty cool package designs for Quakers because if I can relate myself to the audience and what they want, then I can utilise this to come up with a design that the client would approve.
Brief 2 also took my interest because of the openness of what was being asked, I was to define my audience and to choose how to target it. The brief reads – “Your journey is only limited by your own imagination”. Now, this is amazing because I am already a huge believer that we as humans put limitations on what we think we can and can’t do. I originally thought brief 1 was the brief I would most like to get involved with but after reflecting on brief 2, I am starting to think I would much rather take on this brief (shh don’t tell client 1).
Brief 2 mentions taking a journey and with this, travel comes to mine, I love travelling and have done for the last few years, I have hopped on countless planes and have stepped aboard 100s of trains and I can see in my mind the change of direction and linking of tracks, I can see the forever changing landscape from mountain to lake, I can see 1000s of commuters coming and going, on their own life journey, dealing with their own problems and taking on challenges in the day, always wondering ‘where next?’. When will the journey end? One thing connects to the other and then that connects to something else, there is a never-ending connection between these things, whether it is the connection between people and movements or even inventions and history. You could link these together and follow the rabbit trail for infinity.
I would love to have a blast at brief 2, although I am not completely sure what the client wants, is it a campaign, is it a packaging, is it a design for a website, is it a design for a poster that just brings people together in peace and harmony. These are questions I would have for client 2 before getting started.
I have a very cultural image in my head of dance and movement with very fluid colours and shapes.
Now I find myself relating to brief 1 and 2 but brief 3 I don’t have children and not a big drinker so because I don’t think about it, I don’t really see it in front of me. I know underage drinking is a huge problem in today’s society and I would love to help those out there who do have children and want to teach them how to be responsible.
Brief 3 is also an open brief. It is clear who the audience is and what the client want’s to achieve and is asking the designer to recommend what media or format to use, so a lot of responsibility here is put into the designer’s hands to come up with a unique campaign to urge parents to talk to their children.
This got me thinking about the Uncle Sam poster. I remember as a kid I use to see this image on flyers and advertisements on my tv screen. To this day I still remember how captivating it was, how it made me feel and how this illustration created such a big impact on other young peoples lives.
James Montgomery Flagg was an American artist and illustrator. On the 6th July 1916 the image you can see above appeared on the front page of Leslies Weekly magazine and quickly became one of the most iconic posters in American history.
The presentation of the Uncle Sam poster puts the reader on the front seat of their own life. With Uncle Sam staring with demanding eyes and pointing right at his reader, is almost putting them on the spot and urging young men to join the army right there on the spot.
Could a similar campaign be created to help make awareness of underage drinking?
- Posters
- Adverts on tv and radio
- School Information board
- School newsletter
- Social media page
- Billboard ads strategically placed around schools and colleges.
- A colouring book in schools
As this was my first assignment, it was quite scary at first and had to leave my laptop several times because I was stuck with what to write, but eventually it clicked and towards the end I was able to sit down and get straight into the flow. My main concerns are not knowing if I am writing too much or too little and whether my reflective writing is up to scratch but i’m not giving myself a hard time, I am staying positive and trusting the process. I am excited to move on and to see how my writing and designing improves over time.
Tutor Feedback
You have systematically analysed all three briefs to get an overall sense of
what the client is looking for. Much thought has been put into this exercise and
you have documented this well on your learning log; you have made good use
of highlighting words from each brief to help you clarify what you are being
asked to do – in turn, this has helped you to identify any questions you would
need to ask the client. It is extremely helpful to come away with an overall feel
of what the client is looking for after analysing the brief. Giving time to analyse
and understand the brief gives you a good base to work from when moving to
researching and generating ideas.
It’s particularly good to see you are considering respective audiences. Try to
be mindful of gender stereotypes.
It would be good to also think about how you would manage project deadlines –
perhaps breaking down the brief into key stages working backwards from the
final deadline.
It’s good to see your thumbnail drawings, evidence that you are thinking
through drawing and generating ideas. Keep up with this approach as it’s a
valuable skill to develop and demonstrates that you are able to generate a
diverse range of ideas in response to a brief.
Stephen Furber 