Creating a design brief is one of the most important aspects of a graphic designers work. When making initial contact with a client a designer will begin brainstorming and drawing up plans for what the project needs to achieve. The beginning stages of the design are crucial as they will invariably mould the rest of the design process and if implemented well can help guide the end product towards a smooth and lucrative end product.
The following guide unravels some of the main principles behind creating a solid design brief.
Setting your Graphic Design Budget
The budget is the most important factor to take into account when first brainstorming initial concepts. The budget will determine the expenditure for materials used and will usually allocate an amount of chargeable time for the graphic designer's services.
The budget may also include a range of other expenses. These may include fees for using stock images from private libraries or resources online. If an advert is going to be placed on a commercial website, in a magazine or national newspaper the company seeking a design may also take these factors into consideration.
Target Audience for Your Design
A crucial factor when creating a brief is the target audience. A design for holiday villas for 18-30s will vary considerably to an ad in a local paper for mobility scooters.
When considering the target audience many factors need to be taken into account. These include age, attention span, saturation of market, strength of a brand name and possible endorsements. These factors can be incorporated into the graphical design in a variety of ways such as the colours scheme, fonts used and associated images.
Graphic Designs for Different Medias
The choice of media that the end product is going to be displayed in will make a large difference to the direction of the project. Depending on how the design is going to be viewed and how long it is going to be viewed for will change what kind of impact the design is required to make.
A poster for instance could have many different possibilities. A large billboard poster may only be viewed fleetingly on a busy stretch of road by motorists and passers by. As it is only viewed for a short stretch it needs to make a big impact in a short amount of time. To achieve this, a strong use of colours will need to be employed whether bustling with energy or a minimal black and white design with splashes of colour to punctuate the design.
To another extreme if a design is going to be viewed online a different range of principals may need to be employed to grab people's attention. A small banner will be competing for space on screen amongst a variety of other images and distractions. To gain a viewers attention a design of this kind will need to be to the point, using a mixture of minimal amounts of text and eye catching imagery to draw in attention against competing images and animations.