What is it exactly?
A creative brief is a document that defines the project and succinctly describes how each component of the problem will be solved. It provides a clear framework for the creative process and should be used to evaluate design iterations throughout a project’s duration. For many firms, creative briefs are a multi-page document containing many paragraphs of text describing the client’s market position, assignment and project goals. Our creative briefs are simpler yet go further in order to prepare our clients for creativity. They usually take the form of a one-page chart, making it simple to reference and easy to understand at a glance. No one will read a brief with too many words and the primary goal of uniting the client and creative team will be lost. It is often a project in and of itself.

Excerpt from a sample brief
In order to understand how a creative brief directly affects the resulting creative, let’s take a look at parts of a sample brief. Note that the company name and specific references have been removed.

This brand is asking for a packaging redesign. The company has a complex product line with multiple categories along with a standard and premium level offering. They are requesting that multiple design directions be explored but haven’t considered how or why each direction might be different. Here’s a sampling of the core sections:

1. Overall Messaging and Market positioning
-Direction 1: Product copy will reinforce a nationalistic message, positioning the brand as classic and all-American with offerings for everyone.
-Direction 2: Product copy will emphasize the advanced technology in the products, positioning the brand as young, technical and sleek.

2. Overall Mood and Tone
- Direction 1: An evolution of the existing packaging, feels rough and earthy. (more classic)
-Direction 2: Sleek, modern, and techy (more contemporary)

3. Category Coloring
In both directions, color will be used to delineate categories.
-Direction 1: Category colors will be played up, taking over the majority of the package.
-Direction 2: Overall brand colors will be emphasized while category colors will be used as accents.

4. Graphics and Imagery
-Direction 1: Photography will communicate the product’s purpose.
-Direction 2: A bold graphic language will communicate the purpose and technology within the product.

5. Basic vs. Premium
-Direction 1: Premium products will have foil-stamped accents, and the color scheme will remain consistent with the basic packaging.
-Direction 2: Premium products will have a very different color scheme that contrasts with the basic packaging.

The Benefits
Creative briefs allow for an efficient process that saves time and money by ensuring that strategic objectives are investigated during the design phase. This is very different from the trap that many designers fall into: creating endless minor variations on color and typeface (just for the sake of it) and calling these “different directions.” This is not a true exploration and does little to propel a project forward.

In the above example, I’m sure you can see a clear roadmap starting to emerge. Design will not magically come out of thin air or be subject to the personal whims of the designer, but will be rooted in the defined criteria. Of course there are times to veer off course and break the rules. The creative brief should be open enough to allow for this. It is not meant to stifle creativity, but to provide healthy structure for the design exploration. From this seemingly dry list of items, groundbreaking, beautiful visual design can and will emerge!

“Is having a blog and an email newsletter redundant?” a colleague recently asked. MSLK believes absolutely not. If utilized correctly both will draw from the same content plan, but your email newsletter helps you stay top of mind with your existing database while your blog is designed to help reach a larger network of followers on social media, including introducing your brand to perfect strangers. Here’s how: A blog is the cornerstone for new, relevant, and on-going content on your website. As we’ve outlined in our article Why Should Businesses Blog?, a blog is a place to tell all of the layers of your brand story engaging your brand fans and followers across varied media, including social media platforms.. As we outlined in our article, Balancing Search Engine Optimization and Blog Content a blog is also a great tool for increasing your website’s overall organic search engine optimization. Articles and key phrases used consistently throughout your blog can help new prospects discover your brand when they are searching for content relevant to your business.

MSLK employs these techniques and each week we receive inquiries from new prospects with eminent design projects as well as future prospects would like to join our mailing and keep in touch. In this manner our blog is helping us meet new prospects who are often late in the buying cycle. These prospects know exactly what they are looking for and are doing very narrow, specific keyword searches, which makes them ultimately more qualified leads.

Our email newsletter helps us maintain relationships with potential prospects who are not quite yet ready to buy. These prospects may be colleagues we have met in person through industry events or have joined our mailing list through our blog. They find our expertise relevant, but do not yet have an appropriate project for us. Our monthly email newsletter helps us stay in front of these prospects in order to remain top-of-mind when they are ready.

For our newsletter content we feature a mixture of topics from recent blog posts, to case studies of recent projects our prospects may be interested in. It is not a duplicated effort because in today’s crowded media environment many people on our mailing list aren’t checking our blog regularly. Our email newsletter is an easy and effective tool to share with them the most helpful and relevant content they may have missed.

Because we are sharing content that is useful, MSLK is happy to report that we average a 30% engagement rate with our emailers. In addition, the articles and content we feature in our emailers receive the most repeat traffic on our blog, Often when we meet with a client or prospect in person they will mention content recently featured in a newsletter. It’s a great conversation starter and a fabulous way to engage with your existing mailing list.

We’re pleased to announce that our new packaging and strategic brand development for Wigwam Mills has just been picked-up by Packaging of the World — one of the most prominent packaging design website showcasing the most interesting and creative packaging work worldwide. Its audience includes packaging designers, graphic designers, advertising agencies, students and manufacturers, garnering close to half a million impressions every month.

Check it out now!

In today’s crowded marketplace, consumers and retailers don’t necessarily need another product in their lives. However humans are natural storytellers. We will always have room in our lives and on our shelves for brands that tell us something interesting .

For over 14 years we have helped brands find their voice in today’s crowded market and send that unified message across varied media. We also recognize that today’s busy consumer doesn’t read. Often a picture — or better yet — a movie is worth a thousand words. This 90 second reel of our work in fashion and beauty showcases a few of the stories we’ve created.MSLK does our best work when we’re helping brands creatively bring clarity to their stories — from overall brand positioning, to identity, packaging, retail experience, websites, and social media campaigns. We find this variety of media invigorating. Today’s multichannel environment is what keeps our perspective fresh, and our creative exciting. We view each medium as simply another tool to help us reveal additional components of the story and unique brand voice.

What is most important is that we understand the level of customer engagement with each medium and reveal your stories within stories as the interest of the customer intensifies. Fashion and beauty brands rely heavily on these stories. Beyond practical needs, a clothing or accessory purchase also fulfills an emotional need.

Shopping is therapeutic, and the process of finding and obtaining the perfect item should be as gratifying as actually wearing it. When women purchase beauty products, they look beyond the quality of the merchandise and evaluate the all-encompassing aura of the brand. This includes the entire brand identity — the product itself, the packaging, the retail environment, and even the website’s online shopping experience. Beauty is part of our daily regimen and today’s conscientious consumers want performance, health and beauty from the inside out, without harm to others or the planet.

We would love to help your brand tell your unique story.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=D84AH-_EQco

Earth conscientious students at Smithton Middle School in Columbia, Missouri have recreated MSLK’s eco-art installation, Watershed. The installation was created by the Eco-Art Club and 6th grade Art Study Hall students. Several months ago, Amy H. Company, Art Specialist at Smithton Middle School read about MSLK’s eco-art installations Take-Less, Watershed, and Urban Tumbleweeds and became inspired. Amy reached out to MSLK asking if it would be ok if she led the students through the process of  recreating Watershed.

The students collected the bottles and began creating strands which have been on display in the school cafeteria, as seen in the image above. Last week they began researching facts and figures for the informational signage which will accompany the installation when it moves to downtown Columbia this week for the Earth Day celebrations. MSLK will share an image of the final installation as soon as it become available.

Congratulations to Amy and all the students for realizing such a large project and great job inspiring others to think twice about bottled water.

This Earth Day remember, our natural resources were not given to us by our parents, they were loaned to us by our children.

If you are designer, you’ve probably already read Paula Scher’s opinion piece, ”AIGA: Unjustified“ in the online journal Imprint, decrying the AIGA‘s decision to forgo other competitions in favor of just one, “Justified.” It has generated an unprecedented amount of comments for the publication, and has polarized the design community. What you may not know is that my agency, MSLK, helped the AIGA in bringing Justified to life.

To clarify, the AIGA had already decided to host only one competition when they came to us. The competition would be an extension of last year’s “Making the Case” competition where work was evaluated not just as a beauty competition, but based on the case study and impact of the work created.

Our role was simply to bring light to the competition by promoting the value and benefits of entering and winning to designers and clients alike. We felt that the name and the promotion of the competition itself must establish some gravitas and the word “Justified” seemed to do just that. Finally, there was a place where great thinking and results beyond just graphics could receive merit and justification. “Get Justified” could become a phrase to aspire to. Contrary to Paula’s opinion, great, innovative design is still a part of that equation, too. The term justified has just as many connotations within design the design field.

Yet Paula is clearly asking for things to remain the same, rather than change. Not surprisingly, many of her contemporaries’ echoed similar sentiments in the comments that followed. I can’t blame them, since things were easier than they are today. Yet today’s designer — especially those who have not realized their full potential — faces a much different reality than designers in the past.

Can Work That’s Merely “Cool Looking” Be  Justifiable?
We at MSLK believe this is what separates design from art. Art can be purely inspiring without the need for any justification whatsoever. (“If you don’t get my art, well, you simply don’t get my art!”) However, design should communicate, resonate, and be effective in the task it was created for. In no way should this preclude it from being visually interesting — or even groundbreaking.

Designers, Then and Now
Paula came of age as a designer at a time when one needed to be practiced at your craft. Cutting rubylith, spec’ing type, adept draftsmanship: these were not easy skills for a novice to come by. Yet the prevalence of today’s personal computer along with readily-available sophisticated software has had a profound impact on ALL creative professionals resulting in a perceived democratization of the creative process.

The positives are very easy to see: now everyone with a Mac can be a writer, musician, photographer, moviemaker, and designer. The big negative of this democratization is a large majority of clients feel as though their familiarity with tools of the trade (namely software) counts as a complete understanding of the creative’s process. This fallacy totally discounts the years of training (and perhaps even innate talent) that designers have gone through to become practitioners.

Aesthetics vs. Effectiveness
This seismic shift in society’s perception of design is reason enough for a 100-year old organization to want to change with the times. Yet, the computer is only one factor in the equation. Paula’s points are well-taken, yet her arguments are not sustainable. The reality is that today’s designer’s cannot survive by creativity alone. Passion, drive, talent, and hard work alone is not a point of difference anymore. Doing “Great Work” should not be seen as the end goal, it should be seen as the given.

What separates the good from the great designers today is whose work is relevant. Who can innovate, yet make a living. Who can lead clients to great solutions while wowing their peers. Which designers who market themselves as problem solvers are actually solving problems? These are measures of design’s effectiveness.

Today’s Designer Must Justify Their Existence Amid:

• the digital democratization of design

• a glut of unemployed designers underbidding each other on a race to the bottom

• a historically high numbers of graphic design students graduating, also competing for projects

• royalty-free (and often just plain free) artwork accessible from any computer

• heavily-edited reality shows where contestants compete to design projects in one day

• prevalence of websites offering rock-bottom priced logos ($19!) with endless rounds of revisions  included crowd-sourced solutions

• a global marketplace where clients no longer need to be constrained by any geographical boundaries

• a litigious society where tight contracts have replaced handshakes

• the ability for clients to alter artwork in ways never seen before

• social media providing instant opinion generation and crowd-sourced approval/disapproval

• the ability to make changes to projects at later and later points in the process

• fewer opportunities for studios to earn income on the handling and supervision of printing, photography, comps, etc

I mean not to paint too sanguine a view of the design profession from 1970s onwards. As a third-generation graphic designer, I am well aware of many long recessions throughout my family had to contend with. Yet, when one considers the list of today’s challenges above, re-read Paula’s article and ask yourself whether she’s accounted for  all of these factors. Do you feel she’s looking out for today’s generation, or merely yesterday’s generation?

Justifiably So
As an owner of a small studio, we grapple with these issues on a daily basis is the environment in which great work must rise above. Personally, I feel that it’s perfectly justifiable to have a design competition which takes these factors into account.

Paula’s main thesis is that this competition will breed sub-par, yet well-argued work. I’d rather have her make that comment after the judges have had their say. I can’t imagine why submitting rationale behind the creative hurt.

Marc S Levitt
Co-Founder, Creative Director
MSLK

If your brand’s core presence is online, you may have heard about Google Panda, a code name for their new ranking algorithm, still very much a work in progress. With all of the conflicting literature out there, I’m hoping to cut through the clutter, so you can understand what you can be doing to better optimize your site. At its most basic level, the aim of this update is to lower the rank of “low quality” sites and raise the rank of “high quality” sites. Google’s spiders are more “human” than ever and can detect many things they couldn’t previously. So you might be asking yourself, how do I become a high quality site in the eyes of google? Read on to learn about the three big ideas we’ve gleaned from our own research.

1. Good User Experience & Design Now Directly Corresponds to SEO
This first point was actually quite shocking to me, because it demonstrates a new level of sophistication. You can have the greatest SEO plan—perfectly optimized page titles, descriptions and key words, yet if your site is hard to navigate and not visually pleasing, this could negatively affect your page ranking. The following metrics, all of which are tracked, demonstrate how user-friendly a page is:
a. The amount of time spent on the site
b. Bounce rate
c. The number of web pages per visit
d. Page response times

2. Content Freshness and Quality
It seems that Google has mainly been targeting sites with tons of ads and links to other sites, in other words, sites with little to no original content. So, it is vital to have high quality, current content that demonstrates original reporting and research. Show that you are an expert. Your content should also be easily sharable, because content that is shared a lot is deemed high quality. Having a sound online marketing calendar can help you stay on track. Oh, and make sure you spell correctly, because spelling errors indicate low quality!

3. High Quality Code
Valid markup is yet another quality indicator. Did you hire an experienced, responsible developer that takes pride in writing clean code? Just because a site might look like it’s working fine on the outside, doesn’t mean that it isn’t a train wreck on the inside. Not to tout this as the end all to be all, but you might try running your site through the W3 validator. It will list all of the errors, line by line, and is a good gauge for the quality of your site’s code.

Criticism
There has been a lot of debate and reportedly many sites have experienced decreased rankings, while news sites have risen to the top. In many cases, sites with superficial current content have high rankings, while sites with higher quality, less-frequently updated content have lower rankings. This is a problem and I hope Google is working on combatting this issue.

Have you been affected?
If you already have an SEO plan in place, you can analyze your current rankings on the keywords you are optimized for and see how they compared to 6 months ago and a year ago. This will tell you immediately if your SEO strategy needs to be revamped.

MSLK Creative Director and Co-Founder Marc S Levitt was quoted in a recent Atlantic article, speaking about the design profession’s critical — yet largely unsung — role. The article aims to draw parallels between wide-ranging professions from fact-checkers to anesthesiologists, describing them the “Invisibles.”

Citing examples ranging from book design to the now-infamous Palm Beach County “butterfly ballot” in the 2000 presidential election, Levitt describes the careful role designers play in shaping others’ content:

While some may think that the best design always grabs our attention, Levitt counters that great design often shouldn’t call attention to itself. “I’m not as concerned with prettying things up as I am with the end user being engaged in the right way.”

The article seeks to draw a connection between various professions, finding common traits:

Meticulousness, savoring great responsibility, and seeking only internal satisfaction are a trifecta of traits—a near antithesis of our societal ethos of insouciant attention-cravers—as a culture we’d all do well to follow.

Full article, by David Zweig, can be read here: http://mslk.co/zFPIm2