Creative Brief - November 18

Today’s topic was creative brief and design research. Creative briefs generally include project background, objectives and strategies to target audience, which can be reached from a series of simple questions in connection with location, budgets, time frame, etc. In order to make it more interesting, we used lesbian night club as an example for discussion in the class. Obviously, everybody had some general idea about the lesbian night club, but when we were asked to use one single message to catch the attention, we hesitated. Eventually, we came out an idea to iconize a hat, which was used to deliver some message like “women only”, “dress neutral”, “mysterious”, etc. A good single icon is better than multiple ones because it is easy to impress the public and differentiate our client from other clubs.

Creative brief serves as a guideline for the graphic design, under which our creative idea will be more organized.

Adjectives:
iconic
tough
realistic

Monday, November 16, 2009

As usual, I sat at the back, and waited for the class started. But when Jimmy got in, he asked us to sit in alphabetic order by our names. He also required us to sit in different seat every time. It sounded like just a little adjustment, but it actually tried to change our accustomed behaviors. When we got used to certain surroundings, we normally would go back to the same place, either consciously or unconsciously. Such accustomed behaviors were the barriers in creation. Because of the custom, we lost our curiosity about the surroundings; because of the custom, we were afraid of changes; because of the custom, we had no idea how to respond to any unexpectation. However, one of the basic conditions for a good graphic designer is to explore different areas of artwork, to meet new people, to appreciate new ideas, and so on.

Then we started to share what we remembered or what we felt interested in Kim Baer. All of us had different highlight about Kim Baer. I was impressive with her passion for design and her persistence in her career. As what she said, “It's important to renew my job once I have engaged in a career that I plan on staying in.” I believed her success should be attributable to her persistence.

The next subject in the class was to evaluate our sketches by each other. We were required to present our sketches, and pick one for discussion, such as the idea or concept of the sketch, which was graded by the whole class from excellent, good or bad. Even though it was not restricted grading, it was still kind of motivation for me to try my best.

Adjectives:
conscious
intellective
intelligent