Student and Real Design Briefs Compared
Written by admin on Wednesday, 18 of April , 2007 at 8:28 am
I was interested to read Sean Dinners - The Real World vs Student Design Briefs in response to my post Sample Design Brief for Students.
As he points out his student brief, which you can download from Seans blog is significantly different to my live brief. The student brief is 3 pages long and has full details of requirements, logos, images, size, essential design elements and technical specifications. This rarely happens in the real world, well not for anywhere I have worked anyway, maybe for some of the big City Agencies. It would be a real luxury to have such a full complete brief for a job.
As I mentioned before usually the briefs I take are verbal, which in some ways is good as you can try and really get to the bottom of what the client is looking for, but you do then have the problem of misinterpretation. A written brief means everything is in black and white and there can be no disagreements on what you should or shouldn’t have done.
Sean also has mentioned before, he gets about three weeks to do a project, this just wouldn’t happen in the real world, unless the client had a huge budget. Some of this is obviously so the student can develop to their full creative potential.
My thanks to Sean for sharing a student student brief, it’s a great comparison. It would be interesting to hear any one elses views.
Any suggestions for the type of “real design briefs” you would like to see are welcomed in the comments below.
Category: Education and Training, For Design Students
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Comment by Sean
Made Wednesday, 18 of April , 2007 at 6:41 pm
Thanks for the mention :).
It’s a good idea for everyone to look at both examples I think as I’m sure it’ll be different depending on where you are who you’re working with.
Comment by Aaron Russell
Made Friday, 27 of April , 2007 at 1:59 pm
As someone who often writes briefs for designers I commission, and receives briefs at college, this is an interesting post.
When I issue a brief I generally do it first through an informal chat over the phone, and then clarify it in writing - just a few paragraphs in an email. Maybe if I’m using a new designer I might go into a bit more detail and give them some sort of paper of what I require.
When I get briefs in college I get several pages of requirements to meet, milestone deadlines etc. A lot of the time it is superfluous but it’s still useful to learn in a more formal structured way.