Creative Briefs

05/04/2009

I was reading Mitch Anthony's blog the other day-he's a super-talented branding and design guy, who founded Titanium and works out of Greenfield, just up the road.  I saw this post about creative briefs from several big, shiny ad agencies based in urban media centers around the world.  They're so different in their approach, and it's interesting to see how the formats express the cultures and values of the various firms.  Mitch's notes and list of favorites show what he values and why he's so good at what he does.
 
In the past I've worked as an independent web consultant and usually had no formal process for beginning a job.  I could get away with flying by the seat of my pants because I worked on smaller projects, which didn't require as much discovery and planning-and I also had a natural leaning toward iterative design.  That approach is sometimes effective, and it can be a speedy route to the destination on the right kind of project.  On the larger technology projects that are more typical here, which usually have lots of "moving parts" and often have multiple audiences to consider, planning goes beyond the creative briefs shown here.  We usually discuss wireframes and site maps, perform user testing, and perform a number of similar processes that are just as essential before a single design is mocked up, before a single line of code has been written.

Getting everyone on the same page at the beginning of the project makes the destination easier to see and shows us how to get there.  I just Googled "Well begun is half done" to see where the quote came from, and it was attributed to both Aristotle and Mary Poppins.  Looks like they were both right. . .

Bill
gravity senior project manager