The long and the short of it!

Having spent a number of years in the advertising and design industry as an Account Director, I can whole-heartedly confirm that most art directors and designers will not read your brief once you’ve finished talking through it (note: I’m excluding copywriters here as they do need the detail of a brief to be able to write accurately).

In the context of social etiquette, this might be perceived as being a little bit rude. However, in our industry this isn’t the case. Those who are fortunate enough to be creative tend not to rely on words – they live their lives through visual experiences and as such, it’s not that they’re not interested in what you’ve written; it’s just that they’ve already worked out the direction whilst listening to you (quick, aren’t they?).

So why even write a brief then? Well, it’s still a valuable document – it’s just more valuable to the account team. The brief provides an explanation from the client marketing team to ensure that the account handler has a firm grasp of what it is the brand is trying to achieve. It’s this platform that will form discussions with the creative team to decipher the strategy behind it and proves an invaluable sense-check against the creative output before a client is presented with a concept.

The importance of a good brief is to ensure that it doesn’t become diluted in translation. Often, creative needs re-visiting for the sole reason that the client has something very specific in mind that they’ve either struggled to communicate, or the account team has misinterpreted.

At Truth, 90% of briefings happen with the client, account handler, AND creative director. Interestingly, it’s quite astonishing at how people interpret briefs very differently, but our method ensures that we evoke lively debate – rather than being ‘off-brief’; something that can often be costly and frustrating (for both parties).

It’s the role of the account team to scribe the brief into succinct and manageable chunks, providing a synopsis of the problems and the ambitions of the brand. That way, when the brief is communicated to the design team, it’s done in an immediate and organised way – without sending them to sleep because you’re too bogged down in the detail.

Good design is best achieved by a short but encompassing brief – and like the output of design, the brief works well when you know what to leave out. Which leads me on to the most important aspect of a client brief. The problem.

Designers (and agencies) produce their best work when they know what the problem is. Designers are problem-solvers; so instructing them what something should look like on whatever you need producing is a bit of a waste of time. A problem isn’t that you’re unsure as to whether a brochure or an eDM would work best; it’s that you need to increase your brand reach – designers will work out the rest. And, you’ll get an end product that works as hard as it can for you. Money better spent then.

Finally, here are a few pointers to ensure you get the very best from your agency:

1. What’s the background?

Tell me (in a paragraph) what the brand is, how it’s performing and why you’ve been challenged to resolve something.

2. Where are you now?

If your brand were a person, what would you be? Tell me what you are.

3. Where do you want to be?
Tell me who you want to be – and make it tangible.

4. What do you want to achieve?

Be realistic. What’s the best outcome of the project to elevate the brand?

5. Who do you want to talk to?
Who’s your audience and why do you want to talk to them?

6. Why will they care?

This is important. What has your brand got to offer that others don’t? How will your brand change your audiences’ life?

7. Must’s and Must Not’s.

If there’s anything off limit (e.g. brand mark, photography use) state it. Otherwise, your concept will be great, but not necessarily something you can run with.

8. Budget.

Yes, we know clients hate sharing budgets – but sometimes it saves a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. It means that the brief can be shaped to your budget and without the embarrassing conversation along the lines of an approved concept that you want executing for half the price.

A leaving thought… keep it tight and to the point, tell us the problem and be open to suggestion.

Happy writing….

Jo Scott

Your brand mark (or logo if you prefer) is the face of your brand, the thing people relate to, they either like your face or not. Yeh, ultimately it’s what’s inside what counts, and that is where ‘Brand Experience’ comes in. But, as we all know, a good first impression is vital, so your face needs to fit.

As brands get older they pass through many stages of their life.

New Arrivals.
New brands have a baby face, cute, new, and refreshing. They are a novelty at first until the reality sets in. You take pleasure watching them learn to walk.
But what will they look like, as they grow older. The choices you make now will affect them forever.

The Rebellious Teenager.
A teenage brand has a changing face; it moves with the times, it may change its looks with fashion as the decades pass. It thinks it’s a rock star.
It has a snarl on its face, an attitude; it thinks it knows absolutely everything. But it still needs the steady hand of discipline or it will self destruct, and eventually leave the rails.

Mid-Life Crisis.
As your face gets older you start to panic, should I change. You don’t know whether to twist or stick, gamble or amble.
Do you do something drastic and become a 30 something rebellious teenager?
You could end up looking like your dad dancing at a disco. Or, do you learn to deal with the fact you are becoming a grandad.

The Weathered Look.
Some brands have a tired look; they may have let themselves go a bit. Or been out in the wilderness for some years. Usually this can be reversed without the need for plastic surgery.
Usually just a good scrub, a good shave and a sharp haircut will do the trick.

The Grandad.
The more mature brand is like your grandad. It has a distinguished face that commands respect, but is also equally loved. It has slowly matured as it has survived life’s challenges.
Older faces don’t need to be radically altered. If your grandad gets a haircut he is just a sharper version of your grandad, right?
He looks a bit fresher, maybe even younger. If he has a nose job, a facelift, or maybe even dyes his hair, people will laugh, and never look at him the same again. The damage is done and you undo all the years of building up your well respected reputation.

There are plenty of brands that are great successes and almighty failures in each of these stages. There is no good and bad stages here, just correct or incorrect brand positioning and execution.

Following on from previous years successful posters by Milton Glaser (4), Supermundane (3), Si Scott (2) and our own Darren Scott did the first one, we asked design legend and Dutch superhero Wim Crouwel to design a number 5 for our 5th in the series of Birthday Posters.

He kindly agreed to donate his time and produced a stunning number 5.

The posters are the usual limited edition of 200 and will be given to ‘Friends of Truth’ as a commemorative gift.

For those of you not familiar with the work of Wim Crouwel see the biography below:

Wim Crouwel Biography

Wim Crouwel is a Dutch graphic designer and typographer. Born in Groningen in the Netherlands in 1928. Between 1947 and 1949 he studied Fine Arts at Academie Minerva in Groningen. In addition to that, he studied typography at what is now the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Crouwel’s graphic work is especially well known for the use of grid-based layouts and typography that is rooted in the International Typographic Style.

In 1963, he was one of the founders of the design studio Total Design. From 1964 onwards, Crouwel was responsible for the design of the posters, catalogues and exhibitions of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 1967 he designed the typeface New Alphabet, a version of which appears on the album sleeve of Substance by Manchester band Joy Division. Other typefaces from his hand are Fodor and Gridnik.

In 1970 he designed the Dutch pavilion for Expo ’70 (Osaka, Japan). A design of Crouwel that is well known in the Netherlands is that of the Number Postage Stamps for the Dutch PTT (in circulation from 1976–2002).In the years Crouwel was working for Total Design, he designed many geometric wordmarks, one of which is the wordmark for the Rabobank, designed in 1973.

In addition to his work as graphic designer, he was also active in the educational field. In the 1950s he worked as a teacher at the Royal Academy for Art and Design in ‘s-Hertogenbosch (currently called Akademie Voor Kunst en Vormgeving St. Joost or AKV|St. Joost) and at the predecessor of what is now the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. Between 1965 and 1985 he was connected to the department of industrial design of the Delft University of Technology. From 1987 to 1993 he was extraordinary professor in the fields of History, Arts and Culture Studies at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. In the years 1985–1993 he was director of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

Honours

1958 and 1966 – De H.N. Werkmanprijs

1965 – The Frans Duwaerprijs

1991 – The Piet Zwart Prize

1991 – The Jan-Stankovsky-Preis (Germany)

2004 – The BKVB Funds Oeuvre Award (National Foundation for Art, Design, and Architecture)

2009 – The Gerrit Noordzij Prize