When deciding on a creative brief format that best meets the needs of your team or organization, remember that the final document should be specific and, ideally, brief.

Sylvia Harris, a New York-based information design strategist, points out, “Clients don’t have time to wade through lengthy briefs and most designers are visual and would prefer not to read long, wordy documents. I find that most people glaze over after a page or two.”

Presenting information in tables or as bullet points can be help keep briefs brief. It can also be helpful to recall that you don’t have to put all relevant information in the brief itself. Take advantage of the web and use hyperlinks or supplementary notes to provide more detailed information where needed.

Be sure and tune in to a free webcast on May 17, 2007, “Successful Creative Briefs: Linking Business Objectives and Creative Strategies” featuring creative consultant Emily Cohen.

Although well-intentioned, marketers new to the creative development process will frequently provide the creative team with an overly directive brief, one which leaves little room for actual creativity. Successful creative briefs however, while clearly stating the business goals of the project, strike a tone of openness and collaboration with regard to creative direction. Michael Hunter, a veteran marketer at Whirlpool describes his approach this way: “Ideally you are defining the space within which the creative team should design and then you need to let them do their job. The objective is to set goalposts for the creatives without infringing on their territory.”

Be sure and tune in to a free webcast on May 17, 2007, “Successful Creative Briefs: Linking Business Objectives and Creative Strategies” featuring creative consultant Emily Cohen.

As creative veterans will tell you, starting a project without a creative brief is like starting a road trip without a destination or a map. Creative briefs are an essential tool for gathering pertinent information, setting clear objectives, and aligning expectations. Since briefs provide a common ground for managing creative projects and evaluating their success, it’s critical that you have a well-defined process for producing and using them. Composing the brief can’t be a perfunctory, “check-the-box” step. Letting the intern do it, or repurposing one from a previous project, is just as bad as having none at all!

Be sure and tune in to a free webcast on May 17, 2007, “Successful Creative Briefs: Linking Business Objectives and Creative Strategies” featuring creative consultant Emily Cohen.

Get a group of designers talking and eventually you will hear the complaint that “clients don’t understand design.” In the eyes of many designers, this leads to unreasonable and downright ugly requests regarding colors, logos, copy, and anything else that will ruin their perfectly good designs.

While I am sympathetic to this lament it reflects two problems. The first is an inability to “sell” our designs to clients. Clients are trying to do business with our designs, so we need to be able to describe and defend their efficacy in business terms, not in aesthetic terms or those dictated by our “professional” opinions.

The second problem is adopting an antagonistic posture towards them. We must engage clients as long-term, collaborative partners. That means striving to educate them when they don’t “get it” and, frankly, trying our best to make their suggestions work if they still don’t agree with us.

It all boils down to trust. Demonstrating that we are easy to work with and have their best interests at heart builds the trust that will incline them to accept our guidance as time goes by.

A quick glance at graphic design job ads on Monster will teach you that, at the entry-level, there is little difference between the role of Graphic Designer and Production Artist. Aside from the fact that most of the responsibilities involve creating sales collateral, client inserts, and applying logos to various things — in other words, “designing” within predetermined formats and guidelines — the job requirements will inevitably include lines like, “Complete Mac proficiency in Quark, Illustrator, PhotoShop, Dreamweaver, and ImageReady,” or “Proficiency in all relative graphic design software; willingness to train where software deficiencies are identified,” or, to the horror of most designers, “Advanced skill in PowerPoint, including use of color palettes, master slides, animations, imported elements, and template creation.”

This state of affairs should remind anyone entering the design job market that your ability to execute designs, prepare files for output, and see projects through to completion mean more to potential employers than your ability to design from scratch.

That being said, how are your software “chops”?

The traditional design portfolio, of whatever standard or eccentric design, is literally “dead” - static, immobile, lifeless. Containing as it does “samples,” of our work, it is at best a showroom and, at worst, a graveyard.

At the risk of seeming naive, I assume that no one likes submitting a portfolio for review without being able to present its contents in person. We know that the “pieces” can’t really speak for themselves; they can’t portray the process of their own creation any more than they can they convey the extent of their effect. They need us, but we can’t always be there to support them.

For this reason, I see the blog totally eclipsing the portfolio. The blog allows you to create a context for your work: this was the problem; this was the inspiration; here is the solution. It also allows you to create a context for yourself.

If you are a creative professional and you don’t have a blog, I can only ask, “Why not?” It’s cheap. It’s easy. And a whole lot of people are already doing it.

This past Sunday in the Washington Post there was a remarkable article about Joshua Bell playing for change in the Washington Metro. He played for about 45 minutes. 1,097 walk past him. 20 or so gave him money. A whopping 7 people actually stopped to listen.

There are a lot of lessons to be drawn from this experiment - “context is everything,” “modern life is too hectic,” etc. - but I was more intrigued by the idea of creative people sharing their gifts freely with the world. On the one hand, I’m talking about doing pro bono work as a way of gaining experience and helping others. But on another level, I’m talking about just “giving it away.”

Shepard Fairey “gave it away” with his Andre the Giant has a posse campaign. Julian Beever gives it away with his pavement drawings.

How could you “give it away”?

It seems like every time I ask an established creative professional if they have any advice for the up-and-comers, they tell me, “Take whatever work comes your way. You never know where it’s going to lead.”

I believe they offer this advice because, as the Clash used to say, “The future is unwritten.”

The future in which you pursue a design career is open - “unwritten” - and your choices and actions determine the ultimate shape of this future. “The future is unwritten” also means that, no matter how much you plan, you don’t know what’s going to happen down the road.

Try out as many different projects and roles as you can when you have the chance. The seemingly random work that you land “through connections,” or that is assigned to you as a “junior” designer, will determine the type of designer you become.

Careers don’t flow like paths; they grow like trees. There’s no telling when a new opportunity will branch into an unexpected and rewarding future.

Pretty much everything that someone does as a designer is done at the behest of marketing. Logos, advertisements, brochures, catalogues, packaging, and websites all aim to differentiate, promote, or otherwise “market” a product or service. And yet, as one graphic designer told me, “Marketing people don’t get creatives and vice versa.”

At a basic level, marketers are not too hard to “get.” Because they are judged according to the revenue their efforts generate, what matters to them can be summed up in one word: results. Therefore, when talking to marketers about work you have done, always describe the business goal behind it and how well it performed against that goal. It’ll make it easier for them to get you.

When you hit the streets as a freshly minted designer or creative professional of whatever flavor, you generally have two choices: go freelance or get a job at an established studio or agency. The problem on the freelance side is that it’s hard to get started because building a client base takes time. On the studio/agency side, getting in can be pretty competitive and everything hangs on what you’ve done, which can be a challenge if you haven’t done that much yet.

Of course, there is a third way: contracting. Contracting is sort of a halfway state between freelancing and taking a full-time job. Like freelancing, the work can be project based or time-limited in some way. Like working full-time, you are generally working on-site, follow a “normal” work-schedule, and don’t have to have all your own equipment. But aside from representing “the best of both worlds,” there are some distinct advantages to contracting. (more…)