Get things rolling with a creative brief

A creative brief is the first attempt to articulate the goals of a project, define its perimeters, audience, and competition. It serves to focus your conversations with team-members, stakeholders and clients. Throughout production you can refer back to this document to make sure you’re still on message. Note: the contents of the brief will likely change as, in the process of development, you learn more about what you're making. 

I've used creative briefs in the development of video games, theatrical shows, branding, book projects and more. I even led a workshop where someone applied these ideas to her baking.

Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Collaborate. Interview your stakeholders so you can internalize their goals. Be sure to include anyone who is in the approval pipeline. You don’t want nasty surprises once production is in swing.
• Keep it brief. It’s okay to do a brain dump at first but whittle it down to the essentials before your share the document. People won’t read it unless it’s succinct and if people don’t read it the value is limited.
• Focus on meaningful descriptors. Words like ‘cool’ and ‘interesting’ are useless. Dig deeper. What does ‘cool’ mean to you?
• Describe your features. What makes your product/project distinct?

Get started

All projects have unique needs and I've tried to develop a brief that's broadly applicable and editable so you can adapt it to your needs. The template is 100% free and I hope you find it useful. You can get the document here. 

How to use it

Okay, you downloaded the template. Now what? Simple. Answer the questions in the document. You want to replace the supplied questions with brief, descriptive and declarative copy. Start with what you know then fill in the rest, tracking down answers through research and conversations with team-members, clients, stakeholders, etc. Some of the questions may seem obvious and you may not want to write a response. Try answering them anyway and share this document with your collaborators and clients. Very often the things we assume to be true aren’t the truths of the people around us and writing them down helps expose these differences. 

Does your brief describe the project clearly enough that is makes sense to a reader who has no familiarity with your concept?

When to use it

Try it on a few different projects. You'll learn what's helpful and what doesn't apply to your work then you can customize the brief to suit your needs. Sometimes you just need to follow someone else's process but it's good to learn what works best for you.

I use creative briefs on team projects to help consolidate ideas and focus the vision. When working on solo/personal projects I'm less worried about outside expectations and tend to dive into the process however I have used them on especially large or complex projects that I'm developing on my own. For example: both Tools Not Rules and the book I'm currently writing began with creative briefs (and both of them have evolved away from the brief over time).

Sometimes its fun to reread a brief after a project is done just to see how much your thinking has changed from your initial assumptions. If your project changes from the initial intent that's fine as long as those changes are deliberate. Editing the brief during development helps you keep your team up-to-date on shifts in goals.

www.tools-not-rules.com

A trip with ayahuasca

This post is going to be a little different. I believe creativity flourishes in an environment where wildness is encouraged and constraints help focus exploration. It seems most of the tools I share are about constraints so today I wanted to write about wildness. I'm going to share the backstory of Tools Not Rules.

In 2013 my wife and I were in Peru where we hired a shaman and a translator to guide us through an experience with ayahuasca. While preparing for the ceremony the shaman told us to hold one question in the back of our minds., something that we'd like to ask the vine, something that would pull us back from the blackness when things became too difficult. My question was this: what is the nature of creativity?

The ceremony was harder than I had imagined. The brew was thick - the bottommost sludge of a Turkish coffee - and tasted like earth and lemon. I chugged it down quickly, handed my cup to the shaman then lay back and closed my eyes. A short time later, maybe half an hour, the ayahuasca made itself known. I grew dizzy and the world was unreliable, shifting around me, and I sat up suddenly, overwhelmed by the need to vomit. The shaman's assistant was waiting by my side with a bucket and, surprisingly, the vomiting felt natural and offered a brief sense of relief from the tension growing inside of me. I fell backwards into my sleeping bag and was eventually overwhelmed by visions. Snakes coiled around me, eyes blinked at me from every surface and I was eaten whole by an enormous circular mouth with countless rows of jagged teeth. A fever consumed me. Dimly I was aware of the shaman breathing smoke and spitting agua de florida to calm me. I was terrified and at the darkest moment I swore I would never do it again. 

But it was worth it.

When I woke from my hallucinations I discovered that I had written down the outlines for two projects. One was a book, which I'm currently working on, and the other was Tools Not Rules. During my journey the vine showed me all of the notes and observations I'd made about the design process, over twenty years of experience and research, and it told me to connect the dots. It told me to do something with all of that information.

I decided to share it with you.

www.tools-not-rules.com

There's no good excuse for being late

Over the years I've been surprised how often people are chronically late for their obligations and the weakness of their excuses. If you're a genius and people don't care if you're on time because you're the best at what you do that's fantastic. Most of us, however, deal with the reality of external obligations like deadlines and teammate expectations.

Creativity is fueled by constraints. Most working creatives apply both personal and external constraints. Personally I've known creative geniuses who can't work within the framework of outside rules and I've known geniuses who thrive on external expectations. The question is whether a person can only work within their personal constraints or can they adopt another system? Whether we're geniuses or not, most of us have to collaborate with other humans and it's reasonable to expect that we share some ground rules to keep things running smoothly. And if someone is paying you to make something you can bet they'll expect you to be on time.

In most cases being late is your fault. You can easily check the traffic online or on your phone and plan accordingly. Ditto for the subway. Your alarm clock didn't go off? Weak. You forgot something at home and had to go back? Your fault. When you blame an outside circumstance you're really saying, in effect, that you're not able to plan in advance or manage your time. Your cat got sick? Some other disaster slowed you down? Okay, things happen, but you only get to use those catastrophes once. Bundle them with a history of lateness and you aren't reliable. And trust is the key thing here. If you're employer can't trust you to arrive on time they won't trust you with other responsibilities. To be clear, your lateness will limit your opportunities. You may not lose your job but you should expect chronic lateness to affect your potential for responsibility, raises, promotions, etc. How you do anything is how you do everything. 

Your lateness doesn't just affect you. If you're late for a meeting it affects everyone at that meeting. Add up the loss of time and money from people waiting for you, or recovering from your late arrival, and you can easily put a price on your unreliability. You screw over a manager or a team-member every time they need to scramble to cover for you and it's a clear message that their time is worth less than yours.

Managers pay attention. Your employees take note every time you're late and they'll follow your example. If you don't respect them enough to be punctual why should they be on time for you? It doesn't matter if you're the one signing the paychecks because respect goes both ways. 

www.tools-not-rules.com

Be a Fixer

A Fixer is someone who gets things done. It's easy to critique or complain but a Fixer looks for ways to make things better. They help identify issues and then actively seek solutions. They won't let jealousy or insecurity limit their approach to a problem because they know great ideas can come from anyone - their boss, an intern or the jerk in the neighboring cubicle. 

A Fixer see gaps and they fill them. They anticipate what needs to get done and if they finish their work early they'll help their teammates even if it means doing something that's outside of their job description. They know the better the group looks the better the individuals look within that group.

You don't need to be an emotionless robot but don't let your reactions get in the way of progress. If you're stressed or upset, acknowledge it then move on. We all have stress and you don't want to get caught in the tit-for-tat trap of measuring your woe's against everyone around you. Focus on getting things done.

When something goes wrong what's your default reaction? Do you complain? Do you attack? How long does it take you to process stress and start looking for solutions? Manager's dream that every employee will be a Fixer. Entrepreneurs need to be Fixers by necessity. Be the person others can depend on for solutions. 

Huge thanks to my friend Paul Dinletir for introducing me to this term.

www.tools-not-rules.com

Be foolish

Leave your fear of looking foolish at the door so you can spend more time generating ideas and less time worrying what people will think of you. Risk looking foolish. Not all ideas are going to be mind-blowing. Or even good. The path to good ideas means you’ll need to suggest, and remove, the bad ones quickly and without fear or judgement. Be willing to share the bad ideas. 

Lead by example. If you’re willing to look foolish it levels the playing field and lets everyone know they can speak their minds without fear of judgement. Have you ever been to a party where everyone is polite and restrained? It's pleasant until one person arrives who is so comfortable in their own skin that it gives everyone else permission to relax and have more fun. Be that person. You don't need to be a extrovert and you don't need to be over-the-top to set this example. Just be engaged and willing to challenges people's expectations.

Have some fun, for crying out loud, and don't take yourself so seriously.

www.tools-not-rules.com

Share your bad ideas

Seeing is believing. Sometimes the path to resolution, and evolution, of an idea means sharing your bad ideas. Yours and the clients. Sharing the good and bad,  and soliciting responses, will tune your understanding of what is important to someone. And oftentimes taking risk on a bad idea will to a good idea.

Don't want to risk looking stupid in front of your client by showing them something incomplete or half-baked? That's makes sense but, remember, you control how you present your ideas. There's a big difference between showing a client some unresolved ideas and showing a client those same ideas but prefacing them with, "I didn't spend much time on these but I wanted to try something different to see where it might lead." 

I'm not saying you should present all bad ideas. If you're making a final presentation to stakeholders and they expect to see something resolved you probably want to leave the bad ideas out of the presentation. Use your judgement. 

At some point a client will ask you to do something that you think is a bad idea and, despite your genius, the best thing to do is to show them what they ask for. Worst case scenario: you discover that you’re not the genius you thought you were. Best case: the client sees first-hand that their idea doesn’t work and they trust you more. In either case you’ll learn a little more about the project by embracing the request and trying it out.

This doesn’t need to be a source of stress. If you’re working with a new client budget for iteration. It will improve the quality of your work and make your clients happier.

www.tools-not-rules.com

Use your telescope

Telescoping is the process of actively switching between high level thought and the details of execution. Think of it as zooming in and out of your work. At the zoomed out view think about high level project goals: who is the audience, what is the hierarachy, am I working within or breaking existing conventions, etc. Zoomed in you can work out the specifics of execution: adding layers of polish and resolving outstanding questions.

If I notice myself getting fixated on details sometimes I'll physically step away from my computer and look at a work-in-progress from 4-6 feet away so I have to shift focus back to a zoomed-out perspective. 

• Plan and lay down the structure.
• Don’t spend all your time focusing on the details.
• Step back and evaluate.
• Repeat this process constantly.

www.tools-not-rules.com

Get your gut checked regularly

Gut checks are frequent, quick, focused tests of your ideas. Invite someone to give you a quick, gut-level reaction to a work-in-progress.You want an emotional or intuitive reaction that helps you clarify any bias you have as the creator. Go ahead and tell them you're just doing a gut check. The shorter their response, the better. It's not a brainstorm, it’s a fast tool to check your assumptions.

Ask a question so the feedback is focused. Use simple, direct questions and insist on simple, direct answers. 

Example questions:

• What’s the first thing you notice?
• What is the most important thing on the screen?
• What’s the first emotion that comes to mind when you see this?
• Would you trust this?
• Is this funny?

www.tools-not-rules.com

Want to find your creative voice? Do your thing. Alot.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a baker, a sculptor, a dancer, a designer an illustrator or any other kind of creative explorer - if you want to develop a recognizable vision, a creative voice, you need to maintain an output of finished pieces. Keeping a log of ideas like a sketchbook is great but you need to produce final work. Do this and patterns, themes and details of execution will emerge.

Imitating others is a great tool and I recommend working in other styles to develop a deeper experience and set of tools to work with, but if you truly want to express your identity through your creative output it’s simple: do the thing you love. 

You can always become a chameleon and match styles to insure a paycheck but as you spend time deveoping your personal style don't worry about the end product. Focus on making stuff. Make it a daily habit and allow yourself to evolve over time. 

www.tools-not-rules.com

Don't hold back, use your best ideas

There is no better time than now for your best ideas. Use them, there will be more. Don’t save them for a better project or a better client because good ideas breed more good ideas.

When we become stingy with our concepts we get attached to them and when we get attached to an idea it becomes the thing that is always pushed to another day because we think it has to be perfect. It's easy to put off the perfect idea because it'll take too much time.

Additionally, the more things you try the more likely you’ll find something that works and when you do find something that works don't be afraid to repeat yourself.

You don't have to reinvent yourself on every project. And repetition is the thing that all your favorite artists are known for. Repetition is style and style is the thing that reputations are built upon.

www.tools-not-rules.com

Keep asking why

Wikipedia calls The 5 Whys “...an iterative question-asking technique.” The idea is that you repeatedly ask yourself, or your client/partner/product owner ‘Why?’ as a way to better understand the issue you are addressing. It’s a useful skill when interviewing clients about their feedback or goals for a design. I can't overstate the value of this tool. I use it working with clients, in interviews with people I admire, with my students to uncover the problems they're trying to solve and even in vanilla (non-design) relationships.

Think of it as a strategy for converting an opinion or vague goal into something you can use. Yes, you'll sounds like a child, or a therapist, but there's a reason they ask questions. They're looking for answers. And if you're doing your job as a designer, so are you. This tool is so simple you can use it everyday to extract specific, actionable, details from general statements. This is also useful for negotiating creative space for yourself when a client is getting too specific. NOTE: Sometimes your Why may be better suited as a What or a How. Use your interrogatives and dig for information! 

Example:

Client: "Make that button blue."

1. Why? Because I like blue.
2. What about blue do you like? I don't know. I just like it.
3. What does blue represent to you? Uh, the sky. And water.
4. What do you like about the sky and water? They're relaxing.
5. Why is that important? Because I want the user to feel relaxed.

Action: Now that you know the goal is a relaxed user you can ask the client whether they're okay with alternate solutions as long as they meet that goal.

www.tools-not-rules.com

Would your manager fight to keep you?

A few years ago Netflix released to the public a presentation about their company culture and one of the themes is effective hiring. They focus on superstars and everyone else is let go. It sounds harsh but I love this idea, particularly if everyone is aware of this standard.

Here’s the test the Netflix managers use to determine whether someone should remain or be cut from the payroll: Which of my people, if they told me they were leaving, for a similar job at a peer company, would I fight hard to keep at Netflix?

Now flip that around: Would your manager fight to keep you?

If the answer is no you need to ask yourself 'why not?'. Either you aren't aware of your managers expectations, you aren't personally driven for excellence, you aren't qualified for your position or you should be doing something else that does inspire you. Which is it?

www.tools-not-rules.com

Develop a daily habit

When I started studying music my teacher said the secret to practice is doing a little bit every day. It doesn’t matter if it’s only 5-10 minutes because the regularity is better than one or two longer practice sessions per week.

He was right. It’s about developing momentum and making sure the last thing you did is at the surface of your thoughts and easily accessible.The skills we don't practice atrophy over time. How long is too long? It's a matter of degrees but every bit counts when you're trying to improve.

You might have heard that doing something 21 days consecutively forms a habit. Maybe, but it doesn’t mean the your body will go on autopilot. On day 22 and every day thereafter you still need to make the decision: am I going to maintain my momentum? 

Regular practice leads to mastery. There is no other way.

www.tools-not-rules.com

If An Email Is 50+ Words, Have A Conversation

Email has been replaced by social networks as the de facto time waster but that doesn’t mean we're using email any more efficiently. It’s amazing for some things: memorializing the details of a meeting, sharing the details of plan, exchanging information, describing goals. Notice the focus on quantitative exchange.

Here’s what email sucks at: creative dialog. Both words are important there: Creative, meaning there's subjectivity and lots of influences at work and dialog, because you anticipate going back and forth. If you ever feel the need to start brainstorming via email consider stopping and actually talking to someone.

Here’s a rule of thumb that I try to follow (as with all rules of thumb it’s flexible): if an email is more than 50 words consider having a conversation, either face-to-face or on the phone.

How To Kill An Idea: Write It Down And Call It A Rule

Be wary of rules. They are often well-intentioned but they don’t respect context. They are, by their nature, inflexible. In contrast, a designer needs to be flexible and have room to explore. Constraints are the fuel for a designers creativity while rules are the box that seals in a singular vision. A constraint describes a goal, a rule describes a solution.

That’s not to say rules don’t have their place. They’re wonderful for describing processes that have been reached through the creative process.

Rules represent values from a specific moment in time and, once you document an idea as a rule, it stops responding to the world around it. It becomes a rule and rules, by their nature, are rigid. They’re meant to protect us, to keep us from doing the wrong thing, to make sure we play well together. Think about the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the NFL rule book and the U.S. Constitution. All of them are powerful documents but once they’re written down people become attached to their interpretation of the text and the principles described become a subject of debate. A distraction from the original idea. Convert an idea into a rule and it will cease to grow. If it evolves that growth will be slow and painful.

Try new things and develop your own tools. Unexpected input from outside our systems is what forces us out of our routines and produces results. View rules as guidelines and tools, use the ones that work for you, discard the rest or save them for another day when they might be relevant.

Share more, learn more

I've been illustrated and designing for over 20 years and during that time I've developed a number of methodologies, and a mindset, that help me make creative stuff. For the past five years I've been taking notes and documenting these ideas so I can better teach the artists that work with me. Not surprisingly, the more I teach the more I learn. And the more I teach the more I realize I have to offer.

I realized my notes currently would make over a years of daily design-related posts and I figure this information is meant to be shared. Your time is precious so I'll strive to be concise and focus on usable ideas. Ideally you can read a post and apply what you learned immediately. 

Please feel free to comment on these posts. I'll be sharing my ideas but I don't expect they work for everyone and other people may have better versions of the ideas I express. If you do, let me know.