This is a guide that I developed in order to get a stronger sense of the process that is needed to be followed in order to take a project from creative brief to quality deliverables in an efficient manner.

Part One: Project Strategy: Issues

1. How to get to grips with the Creative Brief and Projects Goals, Defining the projects key messages and tone and information hierarchy.

Part One Project Strategy: Solutions

1. Identify what the key motivating factor for the project to be successful (the response is usually pretty obvious but what the motivation for the response is often less so) i.e. low price / new service from a trusted brand.
2. Identify who is going to see this marketing: and what kind of demographic they belong to – example current subscribers / new subscribers / a mailing list – for this will help in understanding the emotions and motivations of a viewer
3. Identify what the type of functionality of this marketing endevour this is – informational / promotional…
4. Identify the Messaging Hierarchy – What is the most important motivating factor in the email. Once that is established, all other Direct response tools can be implemented to help bolster this factor, if there is more then one, then it is important to rank them, to lessen the confusion and anxiety of the viewer as to what the implications of the marketing materials are
5. Identify the Direct Response Tools – That will be used that are available from the creative brief and/or are relevant to helping the goal of the project – i.e. Price Reveal or Personalization these will help with the emotional and motivational state of the viewer

Part Two: Problem How to Implement the Project Goals in the Creative:

Leveraging all the Direct Marketing tools (a compelling CTA, a price reveal etc, etc) – to succeed in your projects objective

Part Two: Solution How to Implement the Project Goals in the Creative

1. Define Visual hierarchy of email with quick thumb nail sketch
2. Rule of Three – it often works if you define the three major visual details i.e. (This is an example only) Headline / Imagery / CTA – this helps give the creative a specific structure and helps define the eye path strategy.
3. Positive and Negative Space – Make sure that the messages you want the viewer to focus on are not over whelmed or confused by needless creative, a clean uncluttered design is more effective than one with pretty visual fireworks.
4. Layout visual elements in the email to give the eye anchor points to important information in the email, this helps break up textual information into bite size pieces, which allows the reader to scan and still understand that salient messages within the design
5. Fresh eyes: Once Creative and been designed – leave it for five minutes and look again to see the design with fresh eyes, does the design meet the objects indentified in Section One
6. Build your design in an organized way – label layers, lay out design in segments using folders this will speed up the work floe process

Part Three: Q&A of Creative

The Checklist feature is broken into four sections:

Work Order

1. Double check against Work order – specifically specs, sizes, mandatory info and any limitations outlined

Creative Brief / Updates / Feedback

1. Double check the meaning of instructions.
2. When instructions are completed and updated, make sure you note this in the creative brief this will help you track your changes and make sure you have not missed anything.

( Mark it so in the form it was given ie Email or word Doc)

Design Elements

• Alignment
• Color
• Size
• Consistency among design elements or across creative versions
• Brand guidelines (ex: Color palette limitations with XM Radio)

Fonts Consistency

• Alignment
• Color
• Size
• Leading
• Font Type (Arial)
• Font Treatment (B /I /U)
• Text Type (System text)
• Brand guidelines (ex: CR links are always a certain blue with no underline)

Copy

• Spelling
• Punctuation
• Grammar
• Capitalization Format
• Spacing

Part Four: Project Hand Off Internal

Understanding what you have created and developing an elevator pitch for your work helps the designer make sure they are being honest with their strategy. When choices have been made with visual elements can they be backed up? Do they follow the strategy developed in Section One. If not then it is important to correct the design in order for it to be inline.

Internal Review should be made in person – verbalizing the work with the Creative director or project manager there will help everyone quickly understand the strategy and allow designers and copy writers some ownership of the work and the involvement in the feedback process.

Part Four: Project Presentation External

Develop a simple Bullet explanation of the design to arm the Account Manager can sell the creative and strategy to the client

I was asked a question….

Need your help to settle a dispute. Is journalism going to be free or hide behind a paid wall?

Here are the two article advocating different models

http://www.cjr.org/feature/build_the_wall_1.php?page=all

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/07/28/wired/index.html

Cheers, A Friend

Here is my poorly worded answer and some questions of my own

My Considered Thoughts,

I think these issues are all moot.

(not happy with this? ok…..)

Here is the deal – Ultimately and not that far off – TV News, Print Journalism  - Online Journalism , Music,  Books, Movies, Magazines, Design, Posters, Art Work everything that can be turned into bits will be and there will be a cheap way to view them all, either as all in one Tablet type machine, or eInk or epaper that can display visuals that serve as posters newspapers and TV’s. the modality of this unimportant but it is coming and it is cheap.

Advertising does not work except for Google, and not the advertisers using google. why TV news is still surviving is based on delusion and they will eventually need to think of a new revenue model. TIVO is going to eventually kill it.

One answer is maybe to have ISP’s charge for bandwidth making all media a commodity in the ISP’s minds but the charges would be sent to the info actually being downloaded , I think that it is hard to get ubiquitous free internet – look at phone companies, they have not lost their hold on the market. They have been entrenched in the political system for so long that to untangle them is politically too risky, and is kind of the same thing for ISP’s.

• So does media become a utility? and if so how does one sort out the payment for that, You do not pay for how much water you use – but you do for your electricity? I wonder why this is?
• Or does this become a Endowment for the Arts, but then what happens to the money that companies spent on advertising, does that allow them to drop their prices and thus leave the consumer with more money to spend on media as a utiltiy?
• Do advertisers and ISP partner? If this happens then do the advertisers pay some of the money to both the ISP’s and the Content providers.
• Do ISP become content generators themselves, so GE buys Comcast, or does Comcast buy GE. Or does Google buy them both

ok this email should called questions not answers, let me know what you think

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This podcast features  Jennifer Benz, Chief Strategist and Founder of Benz Communication. The podcast it is about the future of healthcare and about Social networking as a tool for gaining visabilty in a crowded marketplace

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“JD Hooge founded Gridplane to help clients bring their stories to life. Gridplane specializes in unifying practical user interaction with engaging design to craft unique experiences.”
I think this work is the perfect convergence of information and design. Please check out www.gridplane.com

This article shows the various options for the Obama Campaign. I like some of the options but I think they ultimately made the right choice.