I’ve spent 8 years in the web industry and I’ve met more than my fair share of exceptionally creative people. Many of these guys I’d say were limited heavily not by their own talents, but by their clients and employers’ lack of vision.
But herein is a life lesson that many creatives just haven’t realised yet. Sometimes, the job is about more than meeting a brief. It can also be about CREATING the brief.
In reality, many clients aren’t in a position to write a creative brief well. Many don’t know how to, they don’t know what information is required, or they just don’t know what will work and what won’t. Sometimes, they don’t even have a clear vision of the end-goal.
You can hire a really good designer, writer, video producer - whatever. But if you give them a poor brief, you’ll hear a lot of moaning back, or you’ll just get bad work.
The difference between a good creative, and a great creative however, is that the later listens very carefully to the worldview of the client, and can construct a brief for their own work that will delight them, without having to have it spelled out.
If you’re very used to being given prescriptive project briefs for your creative work, then challenge yourself one day to form the brief yourself. Know what questions you need to ask. Put yourself in the shoes of the client and for a moment, try to understand their worldview. Stretching those muscules can make you a hell of a lot better positioned to create great work, that exceeds the client’s expectation first time round.
Photo courtesy of mindpollution.
Ben Packard
February 2, 2012
And what exactly do you propose all of us business analysts are going to do once designers and UI guys are capable of understanding, improving and translating a client’s half baked vision on their own?
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the article and it’s generous quota of underpants pics.