Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
of details about the brand as a whole, and the particular product under discussion. A well-
thought-out, creative brief should inform and guide the design team as they create and ad-
apt their designs to the brand's requirements.
A good creative brief will answer these questions:
• What is this project?
• Who is it for?
• Why are we doing it?
• What needs to be done? By whom? By when?
• Where and how will it be used?
Who, what, where, when, why and how… these are the same questions the reporter
asked as she researched her news story. The company used the same approach to create its
brand. Now that brand is reflected in a brief aimed at the design of specific items.
A good brief will clearly and succinctly describe the task at hand, and define the stand-
ards the product must meet to be successful. Its guidelines should help designers see those
standards as necessary goals rather than as restrictions. A brief that does this encourages
and shapes the design team's creative processes.
* * *
Why do companies create brands? Obviously they do it to sell their products, but what
makes branding an effective sales strategy? The real power of a brand is in creating dy-
namic, meaningful relationships with customers that evolve over time. When consumers
identify unique features and designs with a particular line of products, they assume those
markers always mean the same thing. This can be a double-edged sword. Plenty of attempts
at branding have failed. Most are quickly forgotten, but now and then we get a look at a
high-visibility brand that stumbles or falls. At the time of this writing, Apple is still recov-
ering from a highly touted, brand-supported Map app launch so disastrous that it led to a
letter to the public apologizing for the fiasco. The media jumped on this, touting it as a sure
sign that Apple's long-term ascendance was finally over.
Many saw it as inevitable now that Apple had to operate without its founder, Steve
Jobs, who succumbed to cancer in 2011.
Forbes
columnist Kerry Bodine wrote: “…the
Great Apple Maps Debacle of 2012 has the potential to erode the trust that Jobs built with
