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!
