Art Process: The other side of The Brief

"How to tackle a brief". A humble opinion from a person who wrote them.

I got into illustration through marketing. After uni I was working as a Junior Brand Manager in Nestle on chocolate. I wrote small briefs for artists and designers. And I was getting results I didn’t like.

At first, I put it on account of my rookie writing. I tried writing longer more detailed briefs and then shorter clearer briefs not to stifle artists with directions. But neither got me the results I wanted. In the end I had to redraw some of the designs with a mouse .. in MS Paint. (Don’t laugh, Paint was once a breakthrough in a world of blue screens with yellow blocky letters. And Photoshop was just not installed on my office computer.) Then I would send my wonky sketches to get somewhere close to my goal. Enough light late night redrawing and I got sucked into Heavy Art. Got a degree. And went to the other side.

My naive reasoning for going into illustration was that there were not enough good commercial illustrators. Haha. Imagine that. Now, years later, I know that as a Junior Manager working on smaller projects I was just not yet allowed to work with the big dogs who drew stellar work. Not unlike in publishing you can’t start out by working with, let’s say, Sir Quentin Blake.

However, there was one piercingly important insight in all of this. There are not enough creatives who understand what a client wants. That’s it. That’s the key point.

To understand that you are a glorious tool to show the client what illustration can do for them. FOR THEM.

Nobody really cares which style you have, which medium you use. What clients care for is how you as a tool can make them be better, earn more and engage more people for their cause. So “how to tackle a brief” - understand WHY this illustration is needed for the client and work only towards that goal. And surprise, surprise - there is usually a hierarchy of goals. But later about that.

WHY the client needs your illustration is actually the reasoning for your style, medium, work process, communication manner, ethics and platforms to promote yourself.

That’s why publishers and agents hate impersonal mass queries - it shows you did not do the work of researching what the client needs, their WHY. And that’s why some artists skip all the querying and are fought over by clients - by building their personal brand, by understand their reasoning WHY they’ve made themselves razor sharp tools for solving specific problems for clients.

If you figure out the WHY - it will guide you through the brief like strong wind in the sails, will let you cut corners and simplify your process and get more by doing less.

I’ll leave you with some razor sharp artist-tools and their WHYs.

1. Sterling Hundley - an entertainment for intellectuals. WHY - I will make your consumer feel like they are a head smarter than everyone else. I will add metaphors, obscure references, subtle layers of meaning, respect their demand for fine art in a busy world and honour their refined taste buds.

2. Quentin Blake - a permission to be silly for smart people. WHY - I will create memorable characters based on real life shrewd observations to point out irony in life. I will draw wonky lines and allow people to feel accepted and prompt you or your children to draw. And I will now and then drop a name or a fact that will prove that if an intellectual like me can be silly you are allowed to do the same. What is life without some silliness.

3. Greyson Perry - an example for the lost and found extraverted introverts. WHY - I will show that your trauma story is not to be hidden. No matter the battles and ugliness you had to endure, questions about yourself, your beliefs, your sexuality, I’ll show how you can live with it and laugh at it and show it proudly to the world. Your anger, your frustration, your struggles - they can be patched up and have a place in this world - your broken experience is deserving of a museum. Or a red carpet.

4. Julia Donaldson - an obvious buy for a parent or teacher. WHY - I will make your children love reading. I will give them a simple story with an unexpected strong main character somehow ideally suited for the topic. No boring bunnies and cats. A story with repetition of scenes allowing for repeated reading of the same words. I will rhyme so naturally that they will join in effortlessly an ideal choice for the classroom. And I will choose a topic tied in with the school curriculum.

5. Oliver Jeffers - a quick buy for questioning but busy. I will show that amidst energy and speed and work you can have meaningful moments and allow for deep thoughts. I will be your consumers’ psychoanalyst posing correct questions and pointing at the right answers in fun short stories and conversations. I will use brevity, minimalism, irony but warm them up with clean traditional textures and universally common intimate experiences.

This article is written for Illoguild which I am a part of - an international group of artists who help each other make the best work. Each month we choose a question to answer - this September it's "How to tackle a brief".