After facing some challenges around creative briefs, I’ve been working on a tool called Gaudi that’s all about making creative briefs easier by pulling in the right info and giving you a central spot to kick off projects.
It’s still in the early stages, so I’d love to hear what you think! Specifically, I’m curious about:
Value: Do you think this tool would be useful for your design work?
Features: What features would make it better for you?
Your feedback could really help shape Gaudi. Any thoughts are welcome!
We get requests for concept feedback like this somewhat frequently. I usually don’t comment, but, I have to say, this has potential to actually be a useful tool.
I am curious about the pricing. Will it be a subscription-based service or will you charge per project? If subscription is there a cap to the number of monthly projects? Here is why I am asking about pricing. I am burnt out on subscriptions. Maybe that’s just me. I understand why people want to develop subscription-based products to create a revenue stream, but I feel like if I have to subscribe to one more service, I’m going to barf. I’d be more apt to use this if it were billed per project. Also, that way makes it easy for me to assign a cost to a specific project. I don’t do that many creative briefs as most of my business is with existing clients. We might chat about a project at the onset, but, for the most part, I have institutional knowledge that negates the need for a brief. This type of product would be most helpful for new clients. Point of that being, there might be a month when I don’t do any briefs and there might be a month when I do several. One final thought on this then I’ll move on. You could follow a royalty free stock photo model where users buy credits – so maybe a user buys credits to create five briefs and then can use them at his/her own pace.
How do you pronounce the name? I read it the same way I ready the English word “gaudy.” I’m not sure where you are from or if English is a second language, but “gaudy” isn’t necessarily a word I’d want associated with a product I was trying to sell.
Lastly, it would be super cool if you could white label this. Give me the option to replace the gaudi logo with my company’s logo. That way, if I send a client to the site, they’ll experience my branding rather than gaudi’s. It would also be cool to get personalized URLs – something like https://mycompanyname.gaudi.one/clientnameorprojectname
Hey Steve! Thanks for the great feedback, I appreciate you taking the time!
I haven’t settled on pricing yet because I know a lot of people will be in the same boat as you—paying for a subscription they don’t use that often in a product like this. I totally get the frustration of an underutilised subscription. I’m thinking of a hybrid model, offering credits or something similar for lighter users, and a subscription for heavy users to get a better price per brief.
The name is actually a nod to the Catalan architect with the same name (I was an architect before becoming a designer), but you’ve got a good point. “Gaudy” isn’t the vibe I’m going for at all. I’ll definitely give it more thought. I’m Brazilian, so the pronunciation of Gaudí is different from “gaudy” in English, but that nuance slipped my mind!
White-label and customised links are super cool ideas!
I have 2 follow up questions for you if you don’t mind.
I’m curious, do you run your business as a solopreneur, or are you part of a larger team or agency?
What would be the most value you see getting from a product like this? Is it saving time? Centralise information? Any other?
Most designers and creative directors would welcome something that made writing creative briefs easier, but I’d need better examples of the steps, flexibility, and limitations in the process.
As the example seems to indicate, I’ve never let a client participate in writing a creative brief any more than my doctor would allow me to write or edit my prescription.
In past agency jobs, the creative brief was for the creative team to ensure everyone understood the project. Of course, I would thoroughly converse with the client and analyze their situation before writing the brief. After finishing, I would show the client the relevant parts of the brief to determine if they agreed before having them sign off. However, they would never participate in writing or editing the brief themselves.
This is because most clients resist writing anything. When they are willing to think it through and write, they never understand what the creative team needs to know. They are rarely even able to state their goals without prodding. For example, they might say they aim to produce a booklet showing their products. However, it’s always necessary to dig deeper to find out the goal behind the goal, which might be an effort to modernize the marketing of a line of products that have lost ground to a new line of similar products from a competitor, and that the goal is to boost sales by 10 percent within the next two months.
Even if your system is flexible enough to accommodate the various kinds of briefs and the unique needs of both, it still sounds like I would need to write the brief. As a designer, the final brief would also need to reflect my company’s image — not Gaudi’s. Swapping out a logo wouldn’t be enough; I would need to copy it into my bespoke template. Is your system flexible enough to accommodate that?
My art school was closely associated with an architectural school, so I immediately recognized the name Gaudi as a reference to Antoni Gaudi. Steve is probably referring to the English word gaudy, which means tastelessly ornate and showy. I’m unsure how many North American designers would associate Gaudi with the Catalan architect.
I’d see it being used as a way to formalize client input before a project starts. For the most part, I do this now via an interview. You’re tool could be helpful for seeking input from multiple stakeholders or stakeholders that are hard to pin down or schedule. I’ve tried using PDF forms before with limited success.
I’ve found sending forms to clients is fruitless, they don’t want ‘work’ - the converstaion is best, over the phone.
I have a preprinted sheet with questions about the brief - and I fill them out ad-hoc as I’m talking with the client, they don’t have to go in any order. But before the end of the conversation I can see any blank spots on the questionairre and I can bring those questions up.
Once the sheet is reasonably filled and they’ve sent on files etc then you can get to work easily enough.
But asking the client to fill out a brief sheet is too much for them - I have found.
1. Start a brief using templates or customize it for your specific needs.
2. Add the questions that need to be answered by the client (you can also fill these out during a meeting with them).
3. The project manager/leader and creative team add whatever they need to keep everyone on the same page. You can assign specific people to specific tasks/info to be filled out.
4. Share a one-page link with the client to get approval or feedback.
This is the general process, but I’m still working on the first public version and gathering feedback to understand the main challenges where a product like this could add the most value.
I hadn’t thought about showing it partially to the client, but that makes sense. Maybe we could give the creative team the option to choose which parts to show the client.
From what you mentioned, the overall work of writing a brief really stood out to me. How valuable do you think it would be to automate that process in some way?
Thanks for sharing how you gather information for briefs.
I’ve also faced a lot of challenges when asking clients to fill out forms. It really depends on the client and the complexity or number of questions.
Do you usually get all the information you need from the client in one meeting, or does it take more?
As for your first question, I believe people would pay if this product can improve their briefing process, whether that’s by enhancing quality, speed, or a combination of both.
I think it would be very valuable, considering that most designers aren’t great at writing down their ideas concisely and logically without multiple grammatical and punctuation errors. But is that a practical thing to wish for? If the creative director comes from a writing background, this feature wouldn’t be as important.
Other thoughts…
One difficult problem would be to make what you’re proposing simple and focused yet flexible enough to accommodate the varying needs of different situations and projects. For example, agency creative briefs tend to be tight and focused since agencies carefully manage their client interactions to keep things running smoothly and within budget.
On the other hand, in-house agencies are often looser since the companies often regard their marketing and creative staff as an in-house service group that caters to the whims of various company managers who change their minds and otherwise interfere with the creative process and don’t care so much about efficiency. I’ve worked at multiple in-house and commercial agencies, and they’re all different. What each considers a creative brief differs from one to the next, even though their purpose is the same — describing the problem’s various parameters and goals.
You might include numbered revisions that enable the creative staff to refer back to previous versions in case the brief changes.
Would this be an online template accompanying an online account? Confidentiality and security would be a huge concern. Even when non-disclosure agreements aren’t signed, an agency is expected to maintain confidentiality, at least until the project is finished and turned loose.
Archiving briefs is also important, especially with repeat clients. For example, some clients have yearly projects that differ from year to year but have things in common. Rather than reinventing the wheel each year, referencing previous years’ briefs might provide a headstart.
Copying portions of the brief for inclusion into a final contract might also be important.
A lot of the times it’s not the designer that meets the client, typically it’s Sales who go out and meet clients and onboard new clients.
They can be asked crazy things, like, do you do 3D VR AR architecture - and they will just say YES we can do it all.
Because they just want to get the work and the commission.
The number of times had sales guys come back saying the client wants A B C and we only do X Y Z - and then you’re left either scrambling to outsource A B C - or going back to the client to turn down the work.
Usually, it ends up with the designer managing A B C and still t trying to deliver to X Y Z
Again, I don’t think giving the client a template to fill out is a good idea - I’ve first hand experience here and they just don’t like it and turns very messy very quickly.
You’re better off asking the questions and jotting down answers and directing them during the brief stage.
I think if they are filling out templates they don’t get the direction they need with a conversation.
But is that a practical thing to wish for? If the creative director comes from a writing background, this feature wouldn’t be as important.