The Collaborative Creative brief - good for design and for the client
Collaborating with a client through the initial design brief stage is of huge benefit to the future outcomes of a project. This is because:
- It helps us understand what the client is after. We can establish budget which strongly guides design approach, illustration, imagery.
- It ensures clarity of the brief expectation and what the design team can deliver
- Enables the design team to understand who the users are. Personas are accurately created by UX team. This stage is crucial to the design team as it will allow the right tone to be developed for the audience.
- It enables the client to feel ownership and pride in their role
- It supports the client to communicate their brand etc in a language/format that that they may not have had the opportunity to do before, i.e the language of user experience and design.
- It can be a great team building process (between 2 organisations, opens channels for future discussion and pays dividends with improved communication in future.
- The whole team gets the opportunity to get excited about the project!
How should we support a client to draw up a brief?
Well there is no prescribed right or wrong way to do this. However one approach, as presented by Paul Boag on his blog boagworld.com is to utilise a moodboard. As creatives we often do this but the key is to include the client in this process. Good practice would be to facilitate a meeting where design team and the client sit down to research and compile mood board elements. With particular focus on exploring:
/ Typography
/ Imagery
/ Colours
/ Stylistic elements
