A creative brief is really a document about the design requirements of a project. Sometimes the creative brief might be contained in a project brief which would cover the planning, timeline, development and design details of a project. This brief is to help guide you in producing the requests of a client.
Being a website designer, the creative brief is one of the important properties you should build with your client. Sometimes the creative brief is gathered through the discussion when you ask clients what’s the look and feel they’re going for or what colours they would want to use in ther website.
If you don’t have a creative brief, bad things happen in a project.
This is one the bad ones though not worst yet. And this is how an actual client describes a project.
We want something like Yahoo!. (like the top having some icons and middle is the name of the company) and whatever that we can inherit from Yahoo. We dowan soft colour. Like what the other usual wedding site is. Maybe mix some shocking colour to it. We dowan too corporate feel. Pls mix rounded and squarish stuff to it. Usually wedding site has a lot of rounded edges.
To those who’ve been working on their own, this isn’t surprising to them because they’re used to it and not bother improving on this problem.
Why is it a problem? Well, it becomes a problem when the client says I want something like this person. Right at that point, it actually builds a wall around me as a designer to express what I feel is best for their project.
Secondly, when the client think they know themselves best they sometimes don’t realize they’re killing themselves. Why do most wedding or emotionally moving websites use soft colours? It’s because soft colours represent these emotional representations best.
Do you make a wedding website black or orange?
That’s why half the time we end up creating our own creative brief, deciphering clients descriptions during discussion. In this case, my creative brief will be like this:
- Logo to be placed in the center of website.
- Large representational icons to be above.
- Less colours of soft pink, blue, and etc.
- Make standouts with stronger (warmer) colours.
- We don’t want items too boxed up. (assumption of corporate being boxed)
- Preference of rounded and squarish edges.
The benefit of having the creative brief is to protect the idea of the client and the visualisation of the designer. Once this brief is agreed upon, clients can object to things that aren’t there as it was mentioned in the brief. For example, if the top icons were not present then designer should have a clear logical reason as to why.
However, if the client demands or mixes up his demands with the creative brief, designer can stick up to the client and explain that this is more than what has been agreed upon. This helps prevent loss of time for the designer after coming up with an already almost finished design.
Clients some times may not be aware of the demands they’re handing out that’s why designers should be honest and upfront with the client about the matter. If the clients proceed to be stubborn then explain to the client that if that was done, it’ll take more time resulting in an increased timeline and an added charge to already what is quoted.
You’re not being demanding but trying to protect the clients project that you’re responsible for, the clients time as well as yours. That’s why clarifying the design demands of a client in the creative brief will help save time and protect the project.
Have you been using a creative brief?