A brief is a customer benefit and a designer basis

When a company decides to apply for brand development, it is awaited by such stage as filling out the brief. Many customers consider it a waste of time. However, the brief is one of the most important tools for brand developing.

At its core, the brief is a special document, shaped like a questionnaire and its task is to extract information about a new customer in the best full way. The brief contains general information about a company, a product, a service, competitors, desires and goals of customers and helps the designer to understand what a client wants to see as a result for his brand.

Here are four basic facts why you need to fill out a brief:

1. Any designer cannot know all the specifics of your company, products, services, market, consumers. I have the skills of graphic design, knowledge in the field of perception psychology, consumer psychology, gender psychology, composition, typography, colorists, print preparation, trends in design and fashion, cultural history and all for one main purpose. It is to embody the customer’s desires in the best way, to develop a brand and promotional items.

2. In any design, there are no unnecessary details. Each graphic element, font, color, shape, composition is selected according to advertising tasks, the psychology of a target audience, characteristics of manufacture and distribution of advertising. All elements are justified and on their places.

3. There are no “beautiful pictures”, “beautiful fonts”, “beautiful colors” for me as the designer. I see fonts, colors, pictures suitable and not suitable for the tasks; appropriate and inappropriate for use in this particular advertising, designed for a specific target audience.

4. In the absence of brief, I set the tasks by myself and perform them according to my ideas about your company and the target audience to which the impact of advertising will be directed. Because of this, there is a possibility that a customer will receive the wrong design that he wanted. I will spend time that a client must pay. Therefore, filling out a brief will allow a customer to streamline numerous ideas, choose the most matching ones from the point of view of economic feasibility, reduce the time and save money.

All my consumers know if they fill out a brief, what is necessary to hide from the eyes of a target audience, will be hidden, what needs to be presented in a favorable light, will be presented ideally. 

The best advice while filling out a brief is to be honest with the designer and not to embellish reality. Doing my designer job, I will be able to select the visual means of influencing the target audience more correctly if the task is set precisely and the situation is described in absolute details.

And yes not everything is perfect in the collaboration between a client and the designer. Many customers believe that the brief limits my creativity. Some even believe that filling out a brief is a performer’s job. However, this point of view is incorrect. Even if you specify certain colors, style, and other characteristics, this would not restrict me in my actions in any way. After all, it is possible to create a product in many ways even in a rigid framework.