Project Strategy Brief

• Project Strategy Briefs are documents that the designer creates to inform the reader about their design process (why they chose a certain aesthetic, etc.), as well as why their design fulfills the objectives of the project.

  • FYI: Project Briefs are documents that describe the objectives and requirements for a project—these are supplied by clients (and instructors). Alternatively, some designers call these “Creative Briefs.”

Why do students need to write these?

• It is important the student designers refine their ability to describe the rationale for making decisions. The subjectivity of the design process often makes clients feel that designers do what ever they “want” to do, and should change a design based on their personal opinions, not whether it fulfills the objective.

  • Designers need to prepare for explaining to clients why the best design is one that fulfills the “needs” of a project (objective), as well as the “wants” of the client (personal preferences).

• Student designers need to pay attention to the objective of projects and whether they at fulfilling them with their final design.

Expected Grade Explanation

Expected Grade Explanation is a required section of your Project Strategy Brief (at bottom) that provides the following:

• State the grade you expect on the project

• Support the rationale (to be awarded that grade) by addressing how your process and final design fulfilled the objectives of the assignment. 

  Remember that the time you spent on a project doesn’t equate to a high grade—that work has to “show” in the progress of your project. 

Why do students need to write these?

• Often the grade a student wants is different than the one the project deserves. The shortfall may be due to a lot of reasons:

• Not prepared for class (doesn’t have materials/files ready)

• Minimal progress evident (not much changes on project from class-to-class)

• Failed to fulfill all objectives

• Didn’t format files correctly

Project Strategy Brief Example (1): I chose the brand Happy Cow because I thought it would be fun, have a lot of creative freedom, and add some variety to my portfolio. Since the brand Happy Cow’s target audience was children, I decided to follow the cow and create a character that children would be drawn towards. I also thought that by adding a cow spot pattern in the background, I would have flexibility in the colors represented on each package as well as relating back to the cow theme. The most challenging aspect of the project was clearing space for the important text and material with the background. After we had decided that the strokes behind the text and characters didn’t work, I spent a lot of time going back through and editing the spots to work with the text and logo.

Expected Grade Explanation Example (1): I expect to get an A on this assignment. I believe that I fulfilled all the objectives of the assignment while also creating a unique design that aligns with the brand and the target audience. I know that I was not always prepared for critiques through this project, however, I think I took the criticisms well and improved upon my designs with the feedback I did receive.

Project Strategy Brief Example (2): The first step of my design process for this project was coming up with a list of famous candidates who I thought were either personally funny, intelligent, admirable, or influential.  Karl Pilkington is just the right amount of well-known and unknown that I knew it would be refreshing to base my project on him.  For reference, Karl Pilkington is a comedic guest that frequently appears on The Ricky Gervais Show—which is a discussion type, podcast show—and stars in the reality television show, An Idiot Abroad.  Karl was made famous when Ricky Gervais brought him on his show and Karl freely talked about his seemingly close-minded, yet interesting and unique, odd perceptions of the world at large.

The next step in my process was searching for quotes (that Karl has said) that I thought captured his bizarre, unconventional personality. I had a treasure trove of weird and humorous quotes to choose from.  The quote I initially chose to make up the literal body text was “The other day I was thinking—because I get a lot of headaches—I was wondering whether the head should be where it is. Because, at the end of the day, it’s probably the heaviest part of your body, right? And yet it’s at the top as opposed to, I don’t know, dangling at the bottom somewhere.” However, after making values with the quote and seeing it in action, I did not like the result.  I did not like how some lines ended in a hyphen and thought the hyphens made Karl’s face look messy and scarred.  I settled on using “Jellyfish are 97% water or something, so how much are they doing? Just give them another 3% and make them water. It’s more useful,” which still accurately portrays Karl in all his glorious, creative weirdness.  I want anyone to be able to relate to the quote above Karl’s head even if they do not know who Karl is, so I picked a quote that is not too “out there” conceptually, does not require any context, and is relatable to a wide audience.  The quote is “That’s the problem with having a bald head. It exaggerates the shape.”  The quote ties in the typeface portrait by referencing and bringing the viewer’s attention to Karl’s bald head, which creates this sort of self-aware connection and joke between the typeface portrait and the quote.

I received helpful feedback from my peers and instructor.  One of my peers proposed that I could try using a smaller typeface size and tighter leading for the little bit of hair on the side of Karl’s head and face.  Another peer advised that I should try distinguishing more different values.  My instructor helped me with the placement of my quote and gave me some ideas for different types of backgrounds, which influenced me to go with a mostly black background.

Expected Grade Explanation Example (2): I think I deserve an A on this project. My project fulfilled the objectives established by the instructor.  I included a quote accompanied with the name of my personality underneath it, and the quote I chose is directly related to my personality (as he is referencing himself).  I utilized changes in scale by changing the size and leading of the typeface in certain areas of the portrait, making some areas of text larger and smaller than others, and the leading more spaced out and denser than other parts.  I even rotated and angled certain parts of the portrait text to create variety and movement.  Lastly, I only used 100% black, Avenir type for the entire project and did not distort or stretch any text. I also made mine unique by having a black background with the white quote in front of it.  Plus I took all of my peers’ and instructor’s advice and put it into the final version.