How many times have you seen a folder, website, brochure with poor text? How many times you read a headline and thought what is this all about? How many times did you stop reading a text because it was tedious to read? I’m sure many times. These texts are not written by copywriter but by the client himself. As a graphic designer you don’t care much about the text, it’s not your business – as an art director you must care about it. Here are some tips on how you understand if a text it’s good enough and how you convince your client that is worthwhile having a copywriter do the job.

Copywriting is a job on its own

Like being an art director or graphic designer, being a copywriter is a job of its own. It’s more than just writing grammatically correct; it’s about tailoring the text to the medium to transport the message. It’s very similar to the graphic job, just with other tools. By that said it’s obvious that a client whose profession is to develop/sell products or services is not the right person to write the texts. Neither is the secretary or a journalist (unless your project is a house organ).

Advertising text is not the same as a technical description

Most of the time you will get texts which read like fact sheets or are technical descriptions which are suited for the experts. Most of the time all facts and topics are treated as if they have the same importance and the texts are therefore dull. As with all advertising you can transport only one message which has to be single minded. A good copywriter tailors the text to transport this one message and incorporates the rest in order to strengthen this message. You see, there is clear difference between simply describing the features of something and transmitting a message to the audience with the description.

Half-ready texts needs to be reset

The worst thing is, when your client thinks he can actually write. This results in halfway-technical and halfway-old school-advertising texts. You can recognize them easily. You find the company and product name hundred times in it (written in capitals), many bold text phrases (everything is important) and a lot of words like “new” “best” “never seen” “amazing”. The sad thing is that the strong points of the product get lost and you have to reset the whole thing and get a briefing to be able to find out the structure und the facts which matter.

Copywriting comes after the creative brief – but the copywriter needs to be there first

In most cases the creative brief is made not only for the graphic design part but also for the copywriter. But like I said in a lesson, the creative brief is a compressed form of the briefing which helps you stick to the track. You need to be at the briefing and so does the copywriter. You maybe want to get the help from the copywriter to write the creative brief and convey with him about the direction the whole project should go. It’s important that you both now what you are talking about. You may be surprised how valuable it is to have the copywriter with you as you proceed with the project. You can decide with him how much text you need or want for example – your job is to make the text fit into the layout and the job of the copywriter is to write a text which stays in the layout. The communication between you and copywriter in this sense is crucial.

Get valuable partners

Every professional has his strengths and his weaknesses. The same is true for graphic designers, art directors and copywriters. Some may be perfect for technical products, others for consumer products or cosmetics. Not only graphical appearance must comply with the audience, also the words, and the language. Some creative professions are already more open to classify themselves, like photographers for example, its common that a photographer states that he does only fashion. I haven’t seen this happen yet with copywriters and it’s your job as an art director builds the network and understands what the strengths of the copywriter are. Ask them what they enjoy most writing about, get to know them and the writing style they have. Get to know more than one, so you can bring the right copywriter to the right job. And finally if you have to do jobs in more than one language (of which you may not speak or understand some) is sure you can trust the copywriter.

Now that you know how important it is to have texts written by a professional you can approach your client accordingly and “sell” the copywriter to him. But to get good results you need to communicate with the copywriter and how to do this will be part of the next lesson.

You maybe know the saying: “If you don’t know where you are going, the road takes you there.” So you end up somewhere without knowing if its the right place. In the graphic design and advertising business this is the last thing you want to happen. You don’t want to present to your client a product, which doesn’t get the point your client wanted to communicate. Did you misunderstand the briefing? Did your creativity lead you out of the boundaries your client want to accept. To know what happened, and even better to avoid such a thing to happen you need a creative brief. I know what you are thinking, so lets start and destroy some myths about the creative brief.

Creative briefs are too complicated

You don’t have to start with the high profile creative brief. If you are not used to make one start slowly. Just put on it the most basic things. Client Details, the responsible persons in the clients firm and in your firm. The main goal of the project in 1 or 2 sentences. A short abstract of the briefing. The dates of the steps. You can build a form for it so you just have to fill it out. Later when you get used to it you can expand it.

A creative brief is to abstract to help you

This is really a pitfall for most creative briefs. The balance between writing about the facts and to not limit the creative output. You should in the beginning stay pretty down to earth and later on you can write a little bit more abstract. For example if your client wants a flyer for a sale – write in the creative brief “Flyer for a sale” instead of “Promote a sale”. If you want it to be more open write “Cheap way to promote a sale”. So don’t misunderstand the term creative brief.

Writing a creative brief is lost time

In fact you save time. Think about the time lost when you have to redo a project because you where mislead. It also helps you to get back into a project if some time passed since you last worked on it. Its common that you start a job and it passes a couple of weeks before you really work on it because you did not have all the materials. By the way, you get usually faster the more creative briefs you do. And don’t forget, you do for yourself already a creative brief when you read the brief and rearrange the information in your head, you just don’t put it on paper.

A creative brief is only for internal use

Use the creative brief as a the rebriefing tool. Rebriefing is the process where you send your client before you start an abstract of the briefing to confirm that you understand everything. By sending the creative brief to your client you show that you are a professional and you show that its important for you to make your client happy.

Creative Briefs are cure for everything

A creative brief is just a starting point. Its the launch pad for your ideas but it does not show you the solution. It will help you keep on track, but its not a creative technique. Just by doing the creative brief you maybe not get a better result but you will get consistent products. Its part of a workflow, its not the workflow. So if you write a creative brief and you don’t stick to it or you haven’t got the process managed than its useless.

Some resources for you reading

So you got interested in writing a creative brief. Good. Here are some links to example creative briefs and some further theory. Pick the parts you like and build your own that fits your needs.

• How to Write A Creative Brief + Samples & Video
• The creative Brief – from the Chartered Institute of Marketing
• the perfect creative brief (look at the comments – very inspiring
• Creative Brief: CLient, Goals & Expectations – from Method of Mayhem, nice and short