Episode One, Part One: The brief
If you are a creative or in the media/ agency business, every so often one of the greatest problems you will face is the creative brief: According to the business dictionary (www.businessdictionary.com) by definition it is
“A document produced by a requesting party to be used by professionals operating within an inventive field to produce various useful deliverables. For example, a business might generate a creative brief to instruct an advertising agency to produce a visual design, a promotional video, advertising copy or a web site for promotion via the Internet.”
My understanding of this is that it is a document provided to us, the ‘creative’, that will guide us in a direction that will help us satisfy the demands of the client (and therefore, the consumer). This in theory is a very basic concept but is also where THE greatest communication breakdown occurs. From personal experience, the following questions are rarely addressed:
- At what point is creativity or outside the box thinking supposed to be addressed?
- Who, (really), are you targeting?
- How much time and effort am I supposed to put into this?
- What is the purpose of the communication?
If the above questions have not popped into your mind at least once you may need to rethink your creative stance on LIFE ……(maybe a little overboard). Honestly though, these questions are really important. The reasons why these questions are so important will be dealt with in subsequent blogs but for now next time you are writing a brief ask yourself have you really answered the above questions.
Moses Waweru Chege – Graphic designer
