8 Written Briefs

To get started for the last year of college, we have been asked to come up with and write 8 of our own briefs that we can do over the course of the year. They could do with being briefs that are different in regards to skills you want to develop and challenges you want to undertake.

The first thing I did was make a spider diagram of things that I want to get out of third year and possible areas that I could go into or need to work upon.

Planning on what areas to cover

What I want to get out of third year is two main things. The first thing is that I want to produce work that is much more sophisticated as I think my work comes across as quite naive so I feel that my visual identity sort of needs to become more classier and professional. The second thing is that I want to get my enjoyment for design back because I found last year so difficult that it took away all of the fun that I had originally. With these two things in mind, I knew that my work needed to be engaging and fun for me to do with emphasis on the work I like to create whilst at the same time, need to have a few things that would challenge my design approach.

I felt that areas I wanted to improve on from last year included editorial/publication design as I had a terrible time with it last year and want to redeem myself, so that I can prove to myself that I can produce considered and professional layouts. I want to continue working with Photoshop and expanding the knowledge and the confidence that I gained from last year. Again, Dreamweaver is something that we learned the basics of last year and would be something that I would try again with, attempting to expand my abilities. One other aspect to my design would be target audiences that I have never designed for, for example, I have never designed work for a 'luxury' brand and I have never produced work for solely females or older audiences.

With these areas to consider, I went onto make a list and brainstorming possible areas and briefs that I could go into.

List of Briefs and Areas to work with

The main area of design I like working on is brand and identity, particularly when I get to produce the inception of said brand and identity rather than working for someone or something that already pre-exists and working to those constraints. I started by making a list of areas that I haven't worked in before or things that I have enjoyed. Also, I listed aspects of my life that I felt would allow me to feel relevance to the briefs if I produced work for them. Through this huge list, I was able to write down and see for myself what I felt could work as briefs.

From the list, I decided to expand on 8 of the ideas that I had so that I could work them out to become fully considered briefs.

Brief 1- Wedding Brief (Live Brief)

Wedding Brief Spider Diagram

The first brief that I felt that I could do was to work on a brief that was given to me over the holidays. Through the holidays, I was given the task of producing the invitations for a couple for their wedding, however, I personally wished that I could expand on what I produced as I was very limited in regards to what the client wanted. From this live brief, I want to continue on what I had started and develop and expand on it, particularly as I have never produced work for a wedding before. This would allow me to work on something I had not experienced before whilst attempting to make my design more sophisticated based on the context of the situation. 

Brief 2- Kitty Collateral

Kitty Collateral Brief Spider Diagram

The next brief I decided to expand was the idea of producing work for my cat. My cat means a lot to me and relies on me, to the point where somedays she will not leave my side so I knew that producing some work for her would be relevant to me and could be quite fun as I would have constant inspiration as well as experience to work from. I felt that producing products for a start up business and looking into all of the aspects that would be necessary for the products to sell would allow me to consider product and packaging design as well as promotional material. 

Brief 3- John Ajvide Lindqvist Book Poster Series

John Ajvide Lindqvist Book Poster Series Brief Spider Diagram

Last year, there were two different briefs that I enjoyed doing which were the Penguin Books brief and the Alternative Movie Poster brief. Instead of doing either one of these as the same thing, I decided to do a series of posters based on the novels of one of my favourite authors John Ajvide Lindqvist so that way I would be able to combine both briefs together. I felt that I would be able to expand the brief by proposing ways in which they could promote the novels and I thought that, if I had the time, I could maybe attempt to screen-print the posters as well, something which I tried to learn last year but didn't really feel like I had a brief where it felt appropriate. 

Brief 4- The Parish Pub Rebrand

The Parish Pub Rebrand Spider Diagram

The Parish Pub is an alternative pub in Huddersfield which holds gigs, movie and quiz nights. Despite this, the only cohesion in an identity for The Parish is a menu and loyalty card which has a sugar skull image and thats it. There is no cohesive and consistent identity for the venue and pub so I felt that this would be a brief which would be relevant to my life and fun to do.

Brief 5- Luxury Spa Brand Packaging

Luxury Spa Brad Packaging Spider Diagram

I started thinking about producing work for something that is generally seen as luxurious which lead me to thinking about doing work for a spa. I liked the idea of having a background story of an established family brand that wanted to modernise and reach out to a younger audience. I felt that the relevant target audience would be professional females which would be a target audience that I have never worked for. With something being classed as luxurious, I felt that this brief would be nice to work on product and packaging specifically, in order to better my presentation and crafting of my work. Not only this but trying to make something luxurious would mean that I would have to work on making my design style sophisticated and detailed, perhaps including flocking, foiling or embossing methods.

Brief 6- Film Event Editorial

Film Event Editorial Spider Diagram

Over the holidays I attend a film festival at Holmfirth Picturedrome which is an independent cinema and gig venue. I felt that it would be quite nice to hold my own film festival, however, when thinking about what I could produce for it I felt that it made more sense to use it as an excuse to work on my editorial skills by producing a programme for the event instead. This way, I could work with lots of information about the films and actors and attempt to work with the text and image together to produce something informative and contextualised.

Brief 7- Vegan/ Vegetarian Takeout Eatery

Vegan/ Vegetarian Takeout Eatery

For the first time this summer, I went to an all vegetarian cafe where I was able to eat without having to worry about what I was eating and how it had been cooked. I realised that, even though this is becoming more and more common, there is very little places specifically for this dietary requirement and even less so in regards to fast food or take away places. I decided that this would make a relevant brief to myself and others and would be quite fun for me to work on. 

Brief 8- Desserts Recipe Book

Desserts Recipe Book Spider Diagram

The last brief was the most difficult to come up with, however, I have an affinity when it comes to designing for or with food in mind, especially confectionary and desserts. I wanted to have a second editorial brief which would be different from the first I had done so that I could expand my reach. I felt like a recipe book would allow me to work with a different layout which is quite traditional but I could have fun with. By having food and drinks as desserts, this would allow for wider range of readership yet I want the content to be useful and easy to use for a dinner party, targeting middle class  users.

After expanding on these briefs, I went onto writing them out properly as I would do if they were presented by a client, trying to make the brief as concise and specific as possible, whilst being vague enough for me to expand on them in the future.

Written Briefs for 3rd Year

For the moment, I am quite happy with the briefs that I have come yet the only problem I have with these briefs is that they might be seen as very similar but at the same time I have managed to work out what I would like to work in and how I would like to improve my practise, which I believe is the most important element from my choices and therefore justifies my decisions for them.

Tutorial Feedback:

Following on from this, I had a tutorial where I was able to discuss my briefs briefly in regards to the content and whether they would be substantial enough.

It was commented on that the poster series brief didn't come across as having a proper context due to most publishers would do advertising for a new book only and never for an authors works. With that, it was suggested that I should re-write the brief to make it more relevant and with a context. I suggested producing book covers rather than posters which had a better reception which is something I had considered, however I voiced my concern about it being very similar to a competition brief. it was said that, with the main thing being the context, it shouldn't be an issue.

The rest of my briefs were seen as substantial and it was mentioned that each of my briefs had a purpose and reason as to try and better myself which made them a good range of briefs for me to work with.

Re-written Book Cover Brief

From this feedback, I went onto changing the poster brief to a book cover brief, re-writing it so as to make it appropriate. This way, my brief now has a context in regards to the purpose and necessity of the design work.

In relation to this, we had asked to fill in an action plan sheet which confirms the briefs that we will be doing this year and the time frame that we intend to have for them.

My Completed Action Plan for the Year

This gives us some direction as to what we will be doing for the year and some lee-way if we need to change aspects of the briefs or the entire briefs.