Brief Structures

• A contractual brief is outlined in an employment contract, for exampe, written work for a publication.
• For a formal brief, a meeting could be arranged or organised with the client to understand the neccessary requirements.
• A negotiated brief is where you and your client would work along side eachother, making decisions in a collaborative manner.
• An informal brief could just involve your client calling you on the telephone to discuss their requirements.
• A tender brief could involve several briefs being sent to many people to all come up with different ideas. When all the ideas are returned to the client, the best will be bought forward. A tender brief can be found in a similar style to a competition.
• A competition brief is an open brief that anyone can respond to it. Then the best responses will be rewarded.

Respnding To The Brief

Contractual Brief - When giving a contractual brief, you need to make sure you have read and comlpetely understand the content of the brief before signing. If there are some constraints that aren't realistic, check for negotiable elements that could be changed in order to suit you. If you don't read and fully understand the brief and then proceed to sign it, you are then expected to fulfill the terms of the brief. If any terms of the brief are breeched then legal action could be taken by the client against you and you could end up in court. It is important to liase with you client to provide them the confidence that you will deliver and perform to the standards they have requested. Liasing with the client will allow you to express any concerns, aswell as informing them of what has happened. You will probably be asked to liase with the client on more than on occasion. It is important to plan the work before getting started with the creation, this allows you to fully understand what needs to be done and when it needs to be done by. This also gives you time to negotiate any changes or ideas you have had whilst the planning has began. It is vital that the actual production of the work is completed by the set deadline. If it isn't, you have broken the terms of the contract and your client will not be impressed. If, prior to the signing of the contract, you don't believe possible to have created or finished you set task by the deadline, it should have been bought up with your client then.

Formal Brief - A formal brief is a written document containing specific and precise details about the goals that needs to be achieved. The brief gets straight to the point and doesn't contain any unnecessary detail or information. This allows the client to indentify what it is that needs to be done in a specific manner. This type of brief is mainly aimed at a group of people or a business company rather than individuals. A formal brief is not always a legal document.

Negotiated Brief - A negotiated brief is where (usually) two parties have different ideas from each other but they both have to come to a decision by compromising and making sure that both the parties are happy by the decision. When there are more than two parties involved it allows more room for disagreement and may result in incomplete work for the client.