Creative Briefs

Steps through the process of filling out a traditional brief with examples. A good conventional model to follow.

Excellent exploration of how to adapt the idea of the creative brief to fit the contemporary communication environment. Makes the important point that people don't want to be talked "at," they want to engage.

More discussion of how to balance the relationship between the brief and creative pitch. Their mention of "features" in the brief seemed helpful to me. What "features" do the different department programs have that should be mentioned in the brief?

The real meat is in the comments section where people have responded with their ideas about what makes a perfect creative brief.

Wikipedia's entry on the creative brief. You can see from other listings here that most design professionals think it's more complicated than this.

Excellent examples of how creative professionals "fill in" the creative brief "blanks." Both good and bad examples.

Insights from interviews with 27 design professionals. If not done well, says one, "It's like dropping a flaming bag of poop on our creative team's doorstep..."

I like the four briefing sections discussed here: The Brand, The Challenge, The Strategy and Practical Considerations

One of the best insights from this article: "When you write a creative brief, you're not filling out a form. You're crafting the story of your product and its reason to exist and thrive in the world. This is the first, and arguably the most important creative act of the entire process. And yet it's often approached with all the delight of passing a kidney stone." The columnist looks at the stagnation of the CB and considers ways to revive it.

Some interesting examples of creatively designed traditional creative briefs and an informal critique of them.