If you are a fresher in the design world, you must have heard the term “creative brief.” But not all of us understand its true meaning. These are documents that help in offering project structure in the design world. And every designer must know how to use them to develop the best graphic design ideas. It is essential to understand how they apply to your work to become a successful graphic designer. A creative brief summarizes the crucial information for a design project, such as the timeline and objective. Some of the facts that every budding designer must know and include in the creative brief are described below.
1.Description and Title
First of all, you must give your creative brief a good title. Include a short description of the creative work. It will help the team members to understand why they are a part of it. It will help in letting them know the creative work’s intention.
2.Project objective
By now, you must know about the company. It will help if you take things slow because you are not a professional graphic designer. So, it is time for you to understand what they want to perform with your project. But if the project aims to reach a young audience base with an upgraded website, you have a good direction to begin brainstorming the best design ideas.
If you write down your project goals, make sure they are measurable. At the project’s end, you will want to look at them and know if you have reached the business objectives and goals.
3. Target Audience
Any design methodology must account for the ultimate user or the end user. So, you need to know who your audience is. Also, you will choose the best logo design based on the requirements of your client’s target customers.
Most of the creative briefs will tell you who is the target audience for that particular project. However, they may vary when it comes to specifics. Some might inform you about the dislikes and likes of the audience or provide information about the audience’s personality. It would be best to get clear on who the consumers will be.
Put your best efforts into defining what each person is like by outlining the demographics like gender, age, marital status, income level, or even education level. Note down the values of your audience along with their needs, wants, and interests. State in case you are trying to reach potential ones or present customers. Answering every question you can about what your target audience looks like will help you along the way.
4. Client information
Client information is an indispensable section of every creative brief. It is a robust synopsis that explains the client. It informs who the client is, what their products are, what their brand is, and a lot more. This particular section provides you with a detailed background on what the client wants from the project. It informs you about the client so you can finish the project successfully.
5. Deliverables and Timeline
In case a customer is operating on a particular schedule, they will have a timeline with multiple deadlines for the project. They will break the specific project or logo design process into several stages. It will help you to know what the schedule is. You might even see the deliverables listed at every deadline.
All this tells you what things need to be finished and submitted within the date. In case there is no timeline, there still may exist a deliverables list that shows you precisely what the customer expects to receive from the project.
6. Stakeholders
Usually, creative work needs cross-functional team collaboration. Most of the time, design and marketing are involved. Also, other departments may play a crucial role. It means several individuals from multiple teams operating together to share graphic design ideas to get the same needful outcome.
Therefore, it is very important to identify every stakeholder upfront. Every team member must know the ones involved and what they are responsible for. Adding things to your creative brief will save a lot of time.
7. Budget
It is best if you establish your budget right from the beginning. It will help you in staying on the correct path financially. Also, it guides your decision-making process. You need to write down the actual numbers and identify costs wherever possible. You need to conduct some fast research ahead of time. If possible, look for ways to cut some costs.
8. Tone
If a client includes any information about the message’s tone, they are telling you how the message needs to be conveyed. You can know if the brand is formal, serious, youthful, or upbeat. This fact tells you what kind of graphic design ideas the brand is aiming for and what angles you need to take for your design components. For instance, fancy colors will work for a clothing brand, and muted tones will be ideal for a business offering home goods.
You can work with the best team members to put together some information about the voice and the style that the specific creative work must follow. Think of the message as a person. It must have a personality (a voice) and an attitude or a mood (a tone).
9. Message
A vital element of the design project is what it wants to convey to the target audience. You must understand whether the target audience needs to know about the company’s new products or what the audience must think about the business’s new logo. The message will be brief and straightforward, described in one or two sentences.
To be a professional graphic designer, you must establish what message you need to put in front of your audience. Also, you need to think about what your target audience does, wants, feels, and thinks when it gets the message. See if you are asking them to take action. If you have any branded guidelines, you can include them in the creative brief. Make sure that the message goes well with the overall brand. It keeps your messaging constant over the marketing initiatives.
10. Specifications
Sometimes the specifications are directly included in the list of deliverables. This part of the brief will relay all the close details creatives must know. It may consist of size variations and image dimensions, placement rules for the logo design, format limitations, and a lot more.
11. Distribution process
You must identify how all your media assets will reach your target audience. It is a part of the creative brief that you cannot skip. Every hard work you have put into each of the above creative process steps culminates with the best distribution strategy. In short, you need to communicate your finished project and its message to the audience. Paid advertisements, posts, blogs, email, and social media are some ways of distributing your media.
Conclusion
There are a lot of things that a newbie in the industry needs to learn before they can become a professional graphic designer. There is nothing to hurry about. Trying to rush the learning curve will only create problems. So, be slow and steady and learn how to manage a creative brief. There are certain things that you need to be aware of to come up with the best creative brief for your ideas. Keep things simple, and do not overdo things so that you can give the best result.