Consider The Brief : some short tips on writing a design brief

Consider The Brief

Designer to Client!

This post has been written up to offer information with regards to setting up rough guidelines for setting a brief. Imagine answering the following...

Purpose & Plan

What is the purpose of the project? Is it to expand the business, launch new products or promote something that you are already offering to an exiting customer? In other words, you will need to have some sort of a plan and end goal in mind for the project. If you don't know what it is that you business needs it will be trickier for a designer help. With out a plan, even a loose one, you will end up going around in circles. Maybe ask yourself some of these questions :-

• What do I want to get out of it? 
• What will my return on investment be? 
• Can this be achieved? 
• Should I do this now? 
• What is the competition doing? 
• How can do it differently/better?

Those are a couple of suggestions.

Budget

Budget is important to consider as this will affect the amount of time that will need to be allocated to your project - factoring in deployment, build/design, concept and whether anything else needs to be considered.

If you have a larger budget for your project(s) then you may want to consider a cascading approach. This method, is far more open ended financially but allows for plenty of creative and innovative freedom, a designers dream. A draw back with this free flowing approach is that money and keep on going into a project, regular checks on the amount spent so far are a good approach and ball park figure should be offered in the beginning, especially with smaller business with tighter purse strings. The other method is a fixed price, this method for spending usually suits both parties, or so I have found, a draw back with this is that sometime contracts and prices need to sometimes be re-evaluated should there be substantial changes to a project specification. Favourite approach – Fixed prices discussed in the beginning. Factoring changes (or tweaks) requests will increase price as more time will be required.

Time Frame

Please take into account when you need a project to be completed, things can take time to finish in addition with other projects. Also, waiting to hand over all relevant information at the last minute will end in disappointment eg, sending all the photo's over for flyer an hour before a production deadline or as the designer needs to leave will not make the best of it... Get the relevant information such as, text, photo’s, FTP details etc over in decent time. The earlier, the better! Trust me on this one.

Target Market

If this is a design project that is yet to have a brand established have you considered who the target market will be? Is this for children, adults, professionals, tourist, artists, trade and so on.

Branding

Do you have an existing brand guidelines for your company? If you have any existing logo, colours, fonts, do’s and don’ts this may be required for the project to be completed.

Deployment

Depending on the desired project, how do you intend to deploy the project? Will this be a small web banner, a flyer, will you be using a printer, will this be a for screen, will it be for print? It is worth considering how this may evolve in the future be it for print or screen. It is easier to scale a large file down or resize a vector than it is to resize a 60 px 60 px logo onto a bricks and mortar shop.

Limitations

Is there anything in the that a designer can't do? Will it be for a certain target demographic, politically sensitive, have to fit on some something small, needs fit x y z etc etc

So, you have written a brief....

Dear Designer,

I want you to create something that brings value to the company, here includes the specification and the brief to expand my business! Thank you for offering your time and experience!

Hope this helps a bit!

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