This Creative Briefing Guide will help you get the most out of any graphic designer or creative team you might work with. Even though reasons like lack of time, shortage of information or the perception that graphic designers know as much about your business as you do, may discourage the idea of you putting time and effort into the briefing process, nevertheless, writing a complete and accurate brief is a great investment you can make towards the quality of the design product you will receive and consequently the potential of your business to succeed. Just follow the next 8 easy steps and make the most out of your money when hiring a creative professional.

What type of product are you aiming for? Is it a logo for your company? Is it a website’s layout? Is it your company’s stationary? Be specific on what the final products you require is.

The Company: This is where you tell the designer what your company is all about. You can start with the name and the reason why this name was chosen. List your products and/or services and share your corporate values and philosophy so that they can be incorporated in your final product. Try to add as much detail as possible so that we can create something that will accurately reflect your company’s characteristics.

Competitive advantage: It is important for the creative designer to know what makes you different from your competitors. If there is something that makes you stand out, you should definitely share it with him and his team, so he can make sure it is being communicated by the whole creative approach. You should also state which single word would best describe the benefits of your products or services.

Target audience: Understanding the message your company is trying to convey, is not enough in order to create visuals that successfully communicate it, as the designer also needs to know who you are trying to communicate it to. Specifically, a combination of information such as age group, gender, social status, geographic information or anything else you feel is appropriate will prove to be really helpful to the design process.

Call to action: What do you want your target audience to do and why? This is the point where you list all the actions that a potential client will be able to take. If there is any specific action that you would like your clients to focus on, please make sure to point it out.

Have you visualized it? If you have already visualized your final product or if there is something particular that you have in mind, please make sure to share it with the designer, as it will really help him better understand what you expect to get. You can do this by clearly stating your thoughts along with some words, images or links that you feel share some or all of the characteristics you expect your final product to have. Even examples taken from the designer’s graphic design portfolio could do the work.

Materials to build upon: If you have any photographic material that you have the rights to (bought or shot by you) or any other kind of media that you own and feel could be useful to the creative process, you should share it with the designer so that he can build upon it while creating your design.

Mandatory elements: List all the practical and very important elements that need to be thought through such as corporate guidelines (if any), logos, contact information, URLs, taglines etc.

Usually, not enough thought is given to the highly important part of conducting an inspiring creative brief. It is a fact that any creative team or designer would greatly benefit by working with a complete and detailed creative brief, so if you think that you or anyone you know can benefit by using this article, please feel free to use or share it.

• What are some special skills or requirements you should have to pursue Graphic Arts?

According to statistics, pursuing graphic arts related professions is a decision often made by people who had some sort of creative childhood. Drawing skills are very helpful along with the ability to understand 3D space. High visuospatial intelligence is a common characteristic of graphic artists. Skills like steady drawing line and color matching are not a privilege of some talented people, but can be developed by anyone through hard work and commitment.

Humor and optimism are also very helpful when it comes to creative business, not only for coming up with fresh and funny creative ideas but also for facing communication difficulties with colleagues and clients, without being distracted.

• What kind of licenses or degrees, if any, must you have for this field?

There are several degrees that can lead you to a profession based on graphic arts such as graphic design, fine arts, illustration, industrial design, web design & new media or marketing and advertising. You can always enhance your knowledge and with a master degree on communication, public relations or business administration, but the most important thing when it comes to getting a job in these field is your portfolio and of course your character.

• How long do you have to go to school to be able to go into this field?

Attendances at schools that teach the subject comprehensively take up to 4 years. There are others where you can get your degree in one year and some of them are online but in my opinion, dedicating some more years to education will make things much easier for you in the future.

• How available is training for Graphic Arts? (Availability in colleges, online etc.)

Lately, graphic design has become a trend and more and more schools include it into their curricula. I am positive that if someone decides to pursue graphic design, that could be very easy as long as he is passionate and consistent about it.

• What are some of the benefits you can gain from working in this field?

Working in graphic design field is a lifetime learning procedure. It is a way to keep your mind awake. Graphic design gives you the opportunity to work on several projects, which helps you stay away from boredom in your everyday life. It is a profession that keeps all the doors open! Financially, it can take you as high as you can and fortunately, there is not a specific limit. You can work from wherever you like since most of graphic design projects don’t need your physical presence but your services, which can be offered online.

• Is there any potential for advancement in this field? If so what kind?

Of course as a graphic designer you have the potential for advancement, especially when you work in advertising where you can get a promotion from Art Director to Creative Director or even Head Creative after several years of experience, and maybe some extra master degree. But the most important advancement for a graphic designer in my opinion is the constant improvement of his portfolio and his designing style.

• Where can you go in this field?

There is a huge amount of achievements a graphic designer can target. A graphic designer who works for an advertising agency can try to connect his name and design style with the graphics of successful companies around the world and climb up the business ladder from Art Director to Creative Director, or Head of the Creative Department.

A freelance graphic designer could build a strong presence on the Internet and start working with clients from arround the world, slowly ensuring his personal unique design style. Being a designer one can always have his personal projects and exhibitions from which he can benefit in many ways.

In my opinion, the ultimate goal for a designer in this field is to build a unique recognizable personal design style that solves specific design problems.

• What are some of the branches in Graphic Design?

Graphic design is a profession with branches that keep growing day by day as technology advances. In ten years time, graphic design as a profession will have a different meaning from what we know right now. The most traditional ones branches of graphic design are branding, logo design, prints (posters, brochures, books, magazines, leaflets etc.) and illustration. Lately, much more branches have been added such as, new media, interactive and web design, web applications for smartphones and touch-pads, e-books and so on. Designing for screens is so much on trend this decade!

What a graphic designer does in his everyday life depends also on his field of expertise and the business model he has chosen. What an Art Director in an advertising agency does is way different from what he would do if he were a freelancer or self employed. Even the purely design part is different, since clients of an advertising agency have totally different needs from those of an individual designer.

• Are there any disruptions in normal living standards? (Like constantly traveling etc.)

Disruptions is a quite subjective term, and the way every individuals understands it depends on what he or she has been waiting to do when from the outset he or she decided to be a graphic designer. When it comes to this profession, purely designing is definitely not the thing, since there will always be collateral obligations for ensuring the proper functioning of business such as financial arrangements, advertising, payroll, supervision of employees, if any, learning new software, technologies and techniques. This list can be occasionally endless but we designers always try to keep some balance in procedures, and find this precious creative time for designing only.

Traveling is not required in most graphic design fields and positions apart from some cases when the Art or Creative Director must supervise a shooting which could take place even abroad.

• How easy is it to find a job in this field?

Graphic design as a profession is inextricably linked with new technologies and the need of businesses and individuals for advertising or branding. This is the reason why demand for designers is somewhat volatile from time to time and from country to country. The global financial crisis has negatively affected demand in this profession but this fact is yet a great opportunity and challenge for designers to play their role in global economic growth.

• What is the salary ranges for your field in graphic design?

Graphic design is considered to be between middle and upper-middle income jobs and the good news is that earnings most times depend on the quality of a designer’s work. There are several graphic design professionals out there that have high incomes, even five and six figure ones!

• What might the entering level of pay and what is the potential for financial growth?

Just as in most professions, as a beginner you earn the basic salary for several years. But the potential for financial growth in graphic design is great, since the amount of clients and thus your income mostly depends on the quality of work you deliver. Graphic design is a constructive profession in terms of building an always-expanding portfolio, which constantly attracts new clients and interesting projects, as long as you keep it updated with high quality works.

• Why did you decide to go into this field?

Being a graphic designer was one of the best ways to turn my passion for typography, illustration and visual arts into a career. When a creative person manages to combine passion with occupation, there is no way he will ever get bored of work. Additionally, graphic design is a great way for me to combine business with being anywhere in the world, since there are many fields in graphic design where one can work totally online, sending all design proposals and approved designs by email.

• What would your advice be to me if I were to pursue graphic arts in the near future?

In graphic design it is quality rather than quantity that matters in the long run. Paying attention to little details will set you apart from all the cluster of designers out there. If you are passionate about design, typography, branding and illustration, pursuing graphic design will be one of the best choices you’ve ever made! Do it only if you truly love it and if you really do, try to be honest with yourself when searching for the specific reasons why you do love it, so you can easily recall them anytime you want to light up your inner motivating fire. As a designer, patience should be your best friend and believe me; you will need it in many situations. The only road to success for a graphic designer passes through self-respect, as well as respect for clients and their needs.

• The best way to find out whether a designer is able to carry out project successfully is not their years of experience, not their titles and degrees, not their looks but their portfolio. If you can’t find something interesting in a graphic design portfolio, there is no way the designer can meet your taste and expectations. Even if he has established the best name in the market, if you don’t check out some previous works you can never be sure about what you will get.

• A good way to ensure that you can trust a designer, no matter how famous he may be, is to communicate with him and build a slightly personal relationship before giving him your project’s brief, especially if the case is a brand identity design project that will mark and represent your company for years. Ask the designer questions about the design process and the payment process as well, so that you both know what to expect and you both avoid unpleasant surprises. Any freelancer should be able to communicate with you and if he has good communication skills, some times this is a very good sign that he understands visual communication as well. Of course, there are some bright exceptions out there that are excellent artists with extremely low level of communication skills. In most of these cases the works showcased in the portfolio are quite artistic and of very high quality, but these are the cases where it would be a wrong strategic movement of yours to ask for something different from the portfolio’s style, because you might never get it.

Some times the graphic design language that designers understand is quite different from the one that clients speak. Before you hire a graphic designer you should make sure that you’ve done your research so you can give correct brief, providing useful information for the design. Even if you don’t know what you want, you definitely know what you don’t want and this information is also vital. Some times we cannot imagine what pieces of information are the ones that will spark an idea in the designer’s head. An extended brief is very useful, of course after a good research that will help clients understand exactly what they should ask for and what they shouldn’t.

Some times its quite hard to decide whether you’d better have a freelance graphic designer work on a project for you or a graphic design company instead. It is vital that you know some extra information about freelance designers as well as for design companies so you can easily choose which one is going to be the best choice for a specific task of yours.

To make the most of your budget, you should always first be sure that you know exactly what you want and right after that, you should collect as much information as you can about the company or the freelancer you’re going to work with. As with any business deal, you want to ensure that you are getting exactly what you are paying for. Below, you can find some tips that will help you when dealing with either an individual designer or a company:

Freelance Graphic Designer

Pros

• Usually, in the freelance market you can find the best prices.

• Freelancers tend to have a quicker respond time and they tend to finish the project faster.

• There really is some hidden talent out there that really only comes to light when you find them in the freelance world, where it doesn’t get overwhelmed by the procedures of a company.

Cons

• Sometimes you cannot escape a freelancer’s personal opinions and personal taste. In fact, you may find yourself stuck in a situation where all proposals are of the exact same design style, which may not be exactly what you wanted. Some designers can hardly get rid of their favorite artistic designing style and that’s the reason why you should carefully check a portfolio before hiring a freelancer and assure that the specific professional’s taste and style matches yours.

• Once in a while you run the risk of dealing with someone who thinks his work is better than it really is and that’s the point when communication is getting a little difficult. This happens because both parties are individuals who have opinions and not companies that try to please their client through employees that just want to get their job done and their salary on time.

Graphic Design Company

Pros

• Working with a graphic design company, you deal with multiple people most of the time, which means you will have several experts – sometimes with very respectful professional backgrounds – looking over the project before it gets to you.

• Companies usually have better return policies in case you are not happy with the final image that you have received.

• Once in a while a graphic design company will give out promotional offers to help lower the price, which I have very rarely seen freelancers do.

Cons

• Usually, it takes longer for a project to get completed.

• Most of the companies are going to charge you a lot more than a freelancer would.

It really does not matter which way you go, just as long as you make smart choices when dealing with a freelance graphic designer or a company. You are going to want to look at both of their philosophies, design styles, portfolios and return policies. It is really easy to get scammed by someone who has no clue what real graphic design is.

The number one way to avoid getting the raw end of the deal is to really dig in to any web presence that someone has. You can often find out as much information as you would need to really make an educated decision moving forward. It could very well mean the difference between an amount of money being put to good use instead of being thrown away.

THE QUESTION

Good afternoon Mr. Zakar,

My name is Courtney Rose and I’m currently a visual communications student in my last year of school studying at Cazenovia College in Central New York. As a senior I am required to research individuals in my field and have always found your work to be incredibly sophisticated and inspiring.

I primarily focus my attention on print design, corporate identity, and illustration and would love your opinion on what a new graduate should include in their portfolio. I have a strong interest in these areas of design that you have brilliantly incorporated into your portfolio and hope to achieve the same level of professionalism in my own.

I would like to thank you for taking the time to read this e-mail and look forward to hearing back from you.

Thank you,

Courtney A. Rose

Graphic Designer & Illustrator

THE ANSWER

A graphic design portfolio should demonstrate the breadth of the designer’s talents and experiences. For a new graduate though, professional experience is much limited, but this doesn’t mean that a portfolio won’t be needed in numerous situations. Applying for a job or for post-graduate studies are the most common situations where a portfolio will be asked and the new graduate designer should have a decent and comprehensive way of presenting himself and his work.

Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to expand a graphic design portfolio, no matter previous professional experience. A very good and widespread way is to work on hypothetical design projects, solving hypothetical design problems. This is designers’ favorite pursuit when they don’t design for their clients. They just design for themselves! Design is a passion that fulfills many needs and as a matter of fact, one of them is the expansion and upgrading of ones portfolio!

The next step a graphic designer could take is to donate some good design proposals to real clients, fulfilling real needs and getting exposure in return, while adding some real works in his portfolio. At the start of ones career, the feel of watching his designs finding their way to the printer is outstanding and some of these well designed donations may give you the opportunity to meet new potential clients, while expanding your portfolio with works you really like.

School works is also a good idea but a tricky one, since some of them may luck of quality and if they do, they should definitely not be included. A graphic design portfolio should include only works that the designer is proud of and all designers should have in mind that the same way a portfolio can praise their skills; it can also create the illusion that they are much lower.

A good graphic design portfolio often includes some extra samples of personal artistic projects that reflect the personal style of the graphic designer, such as illustrations, freehand sketches and photography.

There is not a fixed recipe that creates the best design portfolios. The types of works that professional designers include in their portfolios depend on their own unique design style and on the kind of self-profile they want to communicate. If the largest amount of artworks included in your portfolio is logos and brand identities, you are most likely going to be hired for creating logo and brand identity design. You only have to be wise enough to compile a portfolio that represents your skills and mostly types of works that you’d really love to be doing.

Strong brand identity design is what makes or breaks a business right from the start. The importance of visual brand identity is often under-appreciated, but it is one of the most determining factors for a business to be successful. People can hardly understand how much work is put into designing a logo and how it can determine the success or the failure of a business. The logo is the first impression that a potential customer gets from a company and we all know the importance of a first impression. The visual identity design of the company is the way this first impression unfolds, revealing more information about the company’s profile. This part is the most critical to gaining the trust of a first-time potential customer.

Finding an online graphic design professional to create a conceptual design for your business is one of the most important decisions that you can make. You do not just want to go with any free graphic design company that you can find. It is worth it to put a little more money into this aspect of the idea, because high quality visual appeal will do wonders for your business. A great name and a great image set up makes brand identity designers worth so much money. If you have a good name with terrible graphics, there is no point in trying to make it work. The same can be said with the other way around. Really take the time to look through graphic design portfolios so that you can find a designer that you really feel comfortable with, at a good price. Most portfolios can be found right on graphic designers websites, and will give you a good idea of what to expect from them.

A good brand identity designer is a professional that can generate creative ideas from scratch within a provided deadline. These are the people who think up the next big brand names and create the most known corporate identity designs. Looking through each artist’s graphic design portfolio is the best way to find a designer that suits your style and preferences. If you are not sure where to look for them, finding graphic design articles can help point you in the right direction. Usually the artists that write these articles are at the top of their field, or close to it. That is where you are going to want to start your journey. It takes a lot of work to come up with a business concept that you know is going to stand out. It is one of the most rewarding jobs though when you see a business really take off because of the contributions that you made. Strong brand identity design is one of the world’s lost arts, and if it can be mastered it is invaluable.

Children have an amazing potential to inspire and motivate adults! In the video above, which I found recently on YouTube, we can see one of the most strong examples of vitality, inventiveness, shrewdness and enthusiasm that we found very often in children. Everywhere around us we can find ways to have fun, to enjoy life and of course we can find reasons to be thankful of what we have and what we can do! The fact is that, unfortunately, it is very easy for people to forget this freedom they have and let everyday life hunt their thoughts and creativity. This video reminds us that we all have the opportunity to express feelings and enjoy life in a creative way, no matter our wealth, color, background, or living standards.

We have much to learn from children and it would be wise to have our eyes open trying to decode, translate and understand our external stimuli, as if were children! Everything that happens around us has the potential to teach us something new and motivate us, so we can be the ones to take a wise decision or make a vital change to our advantage.  It’s all about the way we conceive what we perceive, and this conception is directly connected to our deep beliefs and the way we have been taught to understand the world.

Being a brand identity designer, I’ve learned that everything in the world can inspire and motivate me, so far as I’m open to new perspectives and ways of thinking that I can transform into design new creative ideas.

Being a brand identity designer, I have learned that finding the latest graphic design articles online is one of the best ways to keep updated and to follow developments in the design field. Internet is a huge continuously updated system of information and data that can provide you with everything you need, even if what you need is the latest news or information on live events. If you are a student, or just someone that is looking to learn some tips of the trade, you will be amazed of what you can learn just by reading a few articles that well-established online graphic design professionals have come up with. You can never have too much knowledge when it comes to the latest techniques and things that can really help you stand out as a designer. Reading through these articles is one of the extras that are going to set you apart from all of the others who did not take the time to read them. It is a fact that you cannot learn everything out of a book or in a classroom, and that is what makes these articles so important to you and me.

Brand identity design is a subject that is constantly analyzed in graphic design articles online and you should consider reading a lot about it, since you can find new information and new logo designs every day on personal websites and blogs. You will find that most people will pay brand identity designers a lot of money if they can deliver a smart creative branding concept. Knowing all of the latest ways to get information and how to really bring out the most in your abilities is how you are going to land those jobs that very few professionals are going to be able to get. It is a huge market that is calling for talented artists that have a mindset to create a brand from scratch. The more articles that you read up on, the more tutorials that you look at, and the more icons and information you perceive, the more ideas are going to be going through your head. The best brand identity designer can tell you that the day they stop learning, is the day that they will no longer be the best at what they do.

The next time you have some free time online, check out some of the articles that you can find on graphic design. It is worth your time and will make you a better professional, even if you don’t notice it right away. There is always going to be a lot of demand for designers that know all of the latest techniques and can come up with logos and other images that people will pay a lot of money for. In some years from now, the profession of a graphic designer will far away from the way it is today and today’s designers are the ones that are going to be transformed to designers of the future, or just pass away. Learning is what this business is all about, and you have free resources available to you on the Internet that should be taken advantage of. Not reading through them just means that you are lazy, and laziness has no place in a business market like design. I know I would be a lot worse at what I do if I did not spend some time every day to read all of the graphic design articles that I could get my hands on when I first started out. Information is gold and this type of gold in our profession is vital!

Brand identity design research is a must if you are about to choose the best name for your business. The impression that every one is going to get from your business is going to come mostly from the name that you choose for it. When people come up with new businesses that have inappropriate names, even if they have all the potential and ideas needed to be successful, their bad name ruins every possibility of growth and development. Nobody goes far with a bad name or an inappropriate logotype, even if the rest is calculated to perfection. Paying a brand identity designer to come up with an appropriate solution for you is worth every penny, and will greatly impact the success of your new business opening. Nowadays there is so much competition with anything that you do business-wise, and you’d better stand out. The best way to experience success is being unique and offering high quality products or services. One of the best ways to assure that people will try to find out this quality themselves is having a logo that inspires confidence and trust. If your logo design is poor, you will simply not get noticed, no matter how good the products or services you offer may be.

A brand identity designer should be your first stop when you are starting up a business that you really want to succeed. They will work with you to help you come up with a strategy and brand name that you can really market to people easily, ensuring flexibility, sustainability and creating many different opportunities for growth. Brand identity designers are going to be your best friend in the business world, and most are not going to come as cheap as you would like, so you have to weigh the pros and the cons wisely. Yes, you are paying a decent amount of money right now, but remember that you get what you pay for. It is worth it to shovel a little extra money out right now at the beginning of your business, and let that brand really start to make money for you in return. It is not necessarily good to go with the cheapest one you can find either. Quality is never going to come from the cheapest source, and this case is a perfect example. Your next stop should be an online graphic designer, who will build your Internet presence, in collaboration with the corporate identity designer or at least following specific brand identity guidelines.

Not many people can come up, all by them selves with a name that is really going to take off in their industry. The trends are always changing, and it is hard coming up with a theme for your business that is always going to be able to compliment that. The next time that you look at some of your competitors in your niche, you will see that some of them have put a lot of work in to their identity. You will also see several of them that look like they did not put much thought or effort at all. Then compare them and you will see the differences almost immediately. Which one would you go with as a customer? I could tell you right now it is probably the better-named one. That is what makes it worth it to hire one of the experts to help you choose the best name for you business and design it as well. Just be sure you have checked their graphic design portfolio and make sure that it suits your style.