- Now when undertaking design,
you want to avoid making arbitrary decisions.
Good design has meaning and substance behind it.
Young and new designers may be inclined
to jump straight into the creative part
of the design process,
and think about the end solution
as soon as they receive a brief.
Now that's not necessarily a bad thing,
but it can lead to fast, obvious and cliche ideas.
I always find taking some time
to think about the project first,
will enable me to discover far more sophisticated
and unique ideas,
which I can base my visual design
around later in the process,
which will be far more impressive.
Over the past few videos,
we looked at how to set up everything
in preparation to begin a logo design project.
In this video, we are going to kick off the design process,
jump into the discovery phase and start with the first step
and look at how we can get ideas from a design brief.
So let's get into it.
(upbeat music)
So here I am with my design process checklist,
and we are right at the start of the process.
Once we have everything in place and we are ready to start,
we can begin with step one in phase one.
So the first step in phase one
is design brief review recap and understanding.
The purpose of this step is really important.
Here, we are going to study the design brief,
where we will be looking to get a full understanding
of the requirements,
and look to highlight and unpack
any key bits of useful information that can stand out to us,
that can give us some possible ideas,
inspiration, and direction we can take into the next step.
So to get ideas from a brief, I undertake five tasks:
one, print brief, highlight, and make notes.
Two, brief questions.
Three, unpack a brief summary.
Four, take notes of initial thoughts and ideas,
and five, plan research direction.
So let's begin with the first task.
One, print brief, highlight and make notes.
So here is the design brief,
we are going to work on for this course,
and here I have printed a copy ready.
Now, when you get your design brief,
I would always recommend you print it out
so we can get hands on with this.
To follow along,
I recommend you print out a copy for yourself,
so you too can read along.
If you want to follow along,
you can get the design brief for free.
Link is in the description.
Now we have already looked at the brief
in a previous episode.
So in this episode, we are just going to scan through it.
So what we are going to do here
is use a simple technique
I use to focus and get ideas out of a brief.
What I do here is scan through the brief
and highlight any point of reference,
interesting words, phrases that stand out,
and any important stuff.
Here, I'll make my way through each section,
reading carefully,
looking for anything that could inspire a potential idea
and a direction and make any notes along the way.
If you're following along,
have a read through the brief,
and look to highlight anything that stands out to you?
What you'll be looking for is: anything interesting,
anything that could inspire or trigger an idea,
things to explore further and learn more about,
and key things you will need to keep in mind.
Here I'll be highlighting key bits
and just underlining obvious bits,
and sometimes I'll just draw a box around larger paragraphs.
For this I like to use an orange highlighter,
but you can use whatever highlighter you like.
So what I now have is a brief
with lots of highlighted areas and some notes.
What we now have are lots of trigger points of interest
that could inspire a potential idea,
and areas I will want to look more into in the next step.
If you want to take a look at my highlighted version,
you can find it in the downloadable course folder.
The course folder
comes with my complete logo design solution
I will be demonstrating on this course,
including all my design example files,
and documents at each step
to aid your learning experience.
The folder also comes with design resources,
such as a logo design process checklist,
process documents and templates,
a project folder structure, color sample charts,
and a logo proposal document example,
all of which you can not only learn from,
but use in your own design process.
To get the full learning experience
and use the resources to help develop your own logo project,
I recommend you get the course folder.
Download link with instructions is in the description.
So with the course folder open,
click into the Design Process example folder
into folder one, Learn and Discovery,
and into folder one, Project Brief,
into folder two, Brief,
and click on the Brief Review PDF,
and you will have the same document I have open here.
So once I have highlighted my Brief,
I can then move on to the next task.
Two, Brief questions.
Now sometimes a brief can raise more questions
than it answers.
While reviewing a brief,
you may build a list of questions
you want more explanation for.
If this is the case,
once you have initially revised the brief,
make sure to chat over any questions
you have with your client or team members
to straighten anything up.
Now, this could be a quick call,
a quick meeting or an exchange over email.
Now you don't want to move forward
until you are satisfied you understand the brief thoroughly,
and there are no doubts.
Once you feel you have a clear understanding of everything
we can move into the next task.
Three, Unpack a brief summary.
So right now my brief may all seem a bit claustrophobic.
It's all contained on four pages,
and there may be some information here
that is not important.
The text is pretty small,
and with lots of highlights it may seem a bit messy.
Once I have identified lots of interesting bits
from the brief and made any notes,
I then use a technique to simplify the brief.
For this, I like to unpack all the criteria
into a simple visual document
so I can see at a glance
everything I need to take into consideration and focus on
as I develop the project.
So with your new project folder open,
click into folder one, Learn & Discovery
into folder three, Brief Summary,
and in here you will find a template
I have prepared earlier,
and included in the project folder for you to use.
Click on this and you will have the same document
I have here.
Now you can either do this in illustrator,
or you can do this on paper.
This is entirely up to you,
but I like to do this in illustrator,
because we have a nice large document open
to include all my criteria on each art board,
which makes for a really easy reference.
When receiving a design brief,
I like to summarize it across this document,
because with this complete,
I will have a very focused document,
which I can reflect on,
which will give me all the direction I need
to continue and develop the design process.
A design brief can be small, cluttered,
and sometimes contain information I may not need.
And there may be bits of scrappy paper lying around.
Here we are simply going to summarize the design brief
down into the most important information
we need to keep in mind.
Now, I always have my design brief to come back to,
but moving forward,
I'm going to refine my areas of interest
into a brief summary doc
to help me remain focused during the design process.
And this can help deter creative block.
As you can see, the brief summary
is spread across 10 art boards,
and we have two pages below for research direction.
So next, I want to take all the interesting bits
from the design brief,
and isolate them into this brief summary template document.
Now, for the sake of time,
I'm not going to type all this out with you.
I'm just going to open a document I have prepared earlier.
So with the course folder open,
click into the Design process example folder,
click into folder one, Learn & Discovery,
into folder three, Brief Summary,
and click on the illustrator doc labeled,
Example Project Brief Summary,
and you will have the same document I have open here.
So here you can see my document
with criteria I have taken from the Brief
and filled out for each part.
Here we have project, what it is, goal,
unique selling points,
tone of voice, likes, audience,
objective, design requirements, and key considerations.
So here I will start with the project title,
Branding for Euphoria A Dance Music Festival.
Next we have what it is.
And here we have a clear sentence
to sum up exactly what we will be designing for.
Next we have goal,
and here we have a very clear list of the exact goals
for the project.
Next, we have unique selling points,
here we have a very clear list of the unique selling points.
Next we have tone of voice,
here we have a very clear overview with a list of words
describing tone of voice.
Next we have likes, here we have a list of likes
suggested by the client.
Next we have audience,
and here we have a very clear overview of the audience.
Next, we have objectives with a very clear overview
of the objective.
Next we have design requirements,
here we have a very clear list of the design requirements
in order for the full scope of the project.
And last we have key considerations,
where we have a very clear overview
of the key considerations.
So these are the key takeaways from the design brief
I will need to focus on.
Four, take note of initial thoughts and ideas.
Now on this course,
I will be demonstrating a full design process
to generate and come up with some cool logo ideas
for your design.
However, you cannot set a specific time
for coming up with ideas.
Ideas can hit us at any time during the course of a project.
It's possible to have good ideas right at the start
as we read through the brief,
and unpack the brief in the early stages,
this can also happen at any point in the process.
If you have any cool thoughts and ideas
you start getting excited about in the early stages,
simply take a note of them.
If it's a logo idea, sketch it out and put it to one side.
We will always be able to refer back to it
and include it in the design process later
when it comes to focusing on ideas.
You never know it may end up being your final design.
So once we have extracted all the key information
from the brief and filled out the brief summary,
we can then move onto the next task.
Five, plan research direction.
So once I have a good understanding of the brief,
and unpacked all the key information,
I then like to consider and plan all the things
I'll need to look into to further my knowledge
and understanding of the context.
Now, also on this summary document,
I have two sheets below for research direction.
These are here to help me focus
on what I'm going to research in the next step.
So first we have project research,
and here I have a list I have put together.
This is what I will need to look into
to learn more and give me more insight.
Now as well as planning my research
to learn more about the project in general,
I'll also want to look into competitors
to learn more about how others
have approached the same task.
Next, we have a page for competitor research,
here I have a very clear list of the things
I want to research regarding competitors.
Here I will be observing what to avoid
and what to possibly improve on.
So once complete,
we will have a brief summary document
outlining all the key criteria
we need to base our thinking on going forward,
and what we'll need to look into next.
This will now become a go-to document,
which we can reflect and refer back to, to keep us focused.
With our research direction complete,
we will now have a decisive list
and a strong plan to go forward with,
removing any confusion about what to do next.
This will set out a really strong plan of action
to enter into the next research and brainstorming steps,
which will enable us to swiftly, confidently
and effectively complete them.
With this complete, I can either keep it on my computer
to come back to later,
or I can print it out to place onto my project wall.
With my illustrator doc complete,
I'll come up to File, Save As,
I'll change the Format to PDF,
then I'll navigate into my project folder
and into the top folder project wall,
I'll click into the first folder,
Learn & Discovery, and save the file as Brief Summary.
This will create an easy document,
which I can easily print out or refer back to later.
Now I love printing out my brief summary,
and placing it onto my project wall.
I find it makes it much easier to glance at
during my design process to keep me focused.
(upbeat music)
Now, in this video,
I demonstrated my process to start
getting ideas for a brief,
and simplify the brief in a brief summary doc.
Now you are welcome to follow along with my example,
but if you're following along with this course,
and looking to undertake your own process as an exercise,
I would recommend doing this now.
So if you're following along and want to practice,
take a pause and carry out your process.
Before moving on, have a go at reading
and highlighting the design brief,
and unpacking everything important down
into a brief summary doc in your own way.
Remember you could use My Template,
which you can find in the Project Folder.
Once you have reviewed the design brief, let's continue.
So once the brief summary document is complete,
and we feel we have a clear understanding
of the design brief,
we can now move onto the next step.
With a brief summary complete,
we can now look to learn
and discover more about the project and context.
In the next video,
I'll be demonstrating how to undertake project research.
So see you in the next video.
(upbeat music)