Recently I have had a ton of design work cross my desk. And despite my previous post regarding the use of our new Creative Brief format, many have come and gone without the benefit of that document.
In some cases I have instead gotten a "wire frame" drawn up by the account executive or by the project manager. And although I do greatly appreciate their efforts on behalf of our clients to get all of the important information into the interface design, wire frames come with a certain risk that as a designer, I always hate to confront.
Wire frames by their nature IMPLY design. When putting information onto a page and moving it around, the person creating a wire frame is in essence suggesting layout. And this is where I take issue with designers seeing wire frames. In fact, I would say showing these wire frames to clients may give them an unrealistic impression of what the final design will look like.
A designer can not help but feel beholden to the various locations set up by a wire frame. If the wire frame shows navigation on the left then the design will most likely reflect that. Especially when the client has seen the wire frame and has an expectation based upon it.
To really allow our designers to design, we have really tried to put the wire frame out of our staff's reach. As a company, we still do wire framing to help with usability issues and also to help us assess functionality. But as far as design goes, we are trying to quash the wire frame entirely.
Instead we are now working with a document we call a PDD... or Page Description Document. These PDDs help up prioritize the information required on a page, but do not imply location in any way. The PDD is created with columns that are set up to allow the project manager or account exec to set PRIORITY levels for various elements. In this way, we can use our ability as designers to create a usable interface design while keeping the client's needs in mind with the relative priority of each element.
I am curious to know what other design firms are doing in the realm and how they use various documents to impart information to designers without implying design. If you have any thoughts or feedback on this, please drop me a line or respond to this post.
Showing posts with label pdd. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pdd. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Beauty and the Creative Brief
As anyone who spends their days in indentured creativity can tell you, being creative day in and day out, on demand, under deadline, is a very hard thing to maintain. One of the things that we as creatives rely upon is a well written creative brief. A well crafted on can indeed make our work "beautiful".
Recently, I have set about reworking our Creative Brief template here at Optiem. As times change and we adapt new ways of doing things, these documents need maintenance in order to stay up to date with what we do. From specific questions about content management systems to how optimized for search a design should be, there are questions that as designers we need to know in order to produce a quality product for our clients.
Our creative brief document has indeed grown over the years. However we have tried to keep it simple and matter of fact. We rely on the Account Executives or the Project Managers here to complete these documents. And in fact, most of the questions on it are just that.. facts. We have purposely written the document to take out as much of the subjectivity of the person completing it as we can. This is important because unless the client themselves are filling out the document, we can't be sure that we are meeting all of their needs. So the actual questions don't leave much to guess.
Creative briefs are nothing new to the advertising industry. But in my experience, I haven't seen them applied often to the Internet. Be it a web site, email or otherwise. I think that is because most of the web companies are spawned by technology, not by creative. That is alright, but not really an excuse. If you are responsible for taking a client's vague vision of where they want to be positioned visually and with messaging and branding, you need a creative brief if you are going to touch them creatively.
Staying on message, staying on target (audience), and staying in budget are all things that are crucial to the process. Without a document to guide you through these obstacles, you are simply guessing at creative direction.
As a creative director for several years now, I have become pretty good at the guessing process. And often, frankly, the client really doesn't have a firm grasp on what they ultimately want anyway. We are in the somewhat luxurious position of helping them to find that. Branding, messaging, positioning, and creating exciting creative. But doing that in the vacuum without a creative brief document is like driving without a license. Eventually it is going to cost you.
If you aren't using a creative brief document to build your Internet products, I suggest you look into it. At the very least it will help you focus your creative vision. And that will always increase your chances at beautiful design. Write me and I will send you a copy of our document. It could serve as a good place to start for your very own process.
Whats Next? I will talk a little about wireframes (and why I hate them) and why designers should NEVER see them let alone create them. Also, at Optiem we use something called a PDD. Find out what THAT is and how it helps us keep our design work on target.
Recently, I have set about reworking our Creative Brief template here at Optiem. As times change and we adapt new ways of doing things, these documents need maintenance in order to stay up to date with what we do. From specific questions about content management systems to how optimized for search a design should be, there are questions that as designers we need to know in order to produce a quality product for our clients.
Our creative brief document has indeed grown over the years. However we have tried to keep it simple and matter of fact. We rely on the Account Executives or the Project Managers here to complete these documents. And in fact, most of the questions on it are just that.. facts. We have purposely written the document to take out as much of the subjectivity of the person completing it as we can. This is important because unless the client themselves are filling out the document, we can't be sure that we are meeting all of their needs. So the actual questions don't leave much to guess.
Creative briefs are nothing new to the advertising industry. But in my experience, I haven't seen them applied often to the Internet. Be it a web site, email or otherwise. I think that is because most of the web companies are spawned by technology, not by creative. That is alright, but not really an excuse. If you are responsible for taking a client's vague vision of where they want to be positioned visually and with messaging and branding, you need a creative brief if you are going to touch them creatively.
Staying on message, staying on target (audience), and staying in budget are all things that are crucial to the process. Without a document to guide you through these obstacles, you are simply guessing at creative direction.
As a creative director for several years now, I have become pretty good at the guessing process. And often, frankly, the client really doesn't have a firm grasp on what they ultimately want anyway. We are in the somewhat luxurious position of helping them to find that. Branding, messaging, positioning, and creating exciting creative. But doing that in the vacuum without a creative brief document is like driving without a license. Eventually it is going to cost you.
If you aren't using a creative brief document to build your Internet products, I suggest you look into it. At the very least it will help you focus your creative vision. And that will always increase your chances at beautiful design. Write me and I will send you a copy of our document. It could serve as a good place to start for your very own process.
Whats Next? I will talk a little about wireframes (and why I hate them) and why designers should NEVER see them let alone create them. Also, at Optiem we use something called a PDD. Find out what THAT is and how it helps us keep our design work on target.
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