Working to a Brief LO1

Name

Contractual BriefDefinition:a contractual brief is a contract between an employee and a client. It explains the duties required

and how the company follows through with the job at hand. The contractual brief how much the employee will be paid. It includes what the employee is agreeing to before they sign the agreement. If things within the contract are breached legal action could be taken. You have to thoroughly check through the brief otherwise you could agree to things you don’t want to and this could cause complications later in the job.

Advantages: You have a set amount of pay and there are no complications if things go pear shaped. You have a set of guidelines to follow. You know what to expect from both parties.

Disadvantages: If you don’t agree with certain things within the contract there is nothing you can do without taking legal action. Depending on whether you’re the employee or the client you might not be able envision both your ideas together. This means that who ever is paying get the overall say.

Formal BriefDefinitionA formal brief is a brief that is made to officialise what the client want’s doing by the media

company. The formal brief covers exactly what is needed to be done to ensure that the work is done to how the client wants it.

Advantages• It tells you exactly what is needed to be done and you just do it.• *Nothing is signed like a contractual brief.

Disadvantages• If something has been done differently, the formal brief will back the client up if you are

questioned. This could possibly end badly by not getting paid.• *Nothing is signed like a contractual brief.

* This could be a disadvantage and an advantage. It could be an advantage because you are not actually signing anything that say you can’t do a certain thing. It could be a disadvantage because the brief might say how much you will get paid, but in actual fact, nothing is signed to confirm this.

Informal BriefDefinition: Most likely done verbally and can be backed out of or dropped when

pleased. No document is involved in the process.

Advantages: You can back out if you change your mind. It may be more lenient in terms of discussion and sharing ideas.

Disadvantages: There are no documents involved so there is no legal obligation to stay involved. Information could be lost or miss understood in translation.

Co-Operative BriefDefinitionA co-operative brief is where more that one company is signed to work on a project

together.

Advantages• There will be more people working on the project, so this means more ideas which

can help to make a project a better standard.• You could gain new friends which could possibly help you in future projects.

Disadvantages• You are getting paid less that what you would do if there were less of you working

on the project.• Arguments can crop up on different ideas due to not agreeing with one another.

Negotiated BriefDefinition: It is were both parties meet up and collaborate ideas in the best way

possible until they create some kind of hybrid. Both parties make compromises until they are both happy.

Advantages: You get to involve your ideas as appose to it purely being the employer. You can do things to separately benefit yourself as well as the other people involved.

Disadvantages: The clash of ideas may show in the quality of work. Its not all your thoughts purely so this might lessen the quality depending on the quality of the ideas coming.

Commission BriefDefinitionA commission brief is where a big media company hire a smaller independent media

company to do a job for them. For example, if the bigger media company has a lot on, then they will hire in the independent company to do some work for them.

Advantages• It helps independent companies become seen and more known.• The independent companies get paid money for the work they are doing.• It takes a few jobs off the larger companies hands, so they have more time to work on

bigger, more important jobs.• It is easier and cheaper for the larger media company to just hire someone for a short

period of time every now and then instead of hiring someone for a full time job.

Disadvantages• There is the hassle of the larger company trying to find an independent company

capable to do what they want them to do.

Tender BriefDefinition: A company creates an idea and then releases it and then people pitch to

the creators in an attempt to get the job. This can be difficult and you need real passion for the idea to properly work and for you to be taken seriously.

Advantages: If you are the employee you are the one choosing the project which means you will be motivated to finish it.

Disadvantages: If you do the pitch there is still not a 100% chance that you will have the job. You may not have a large say in what happens to your product or graphic design work.

Competition BriefDefinitionA competition brief is a brief made for anyone in the public to try and complete the task given.

For example, the RSPCA do a competition every year on seeing who can take the best pictures of animals. The brief will contain guidelines you have to go by to even qualify to get into the competition, for example, you are not allowed to edit your photos in any way what so ever.

Advantages• There will be prizes to be won, for example, in the RSPCA competition, you were in for the

chance of winning a camera.• Winning a competition always looks good on a CV if it uses any kind of skill

Disadvantages• There are usually many people doing the same competition as you are, so there is a very

slim chance of you actually winning, unless you are an expert in that certain thing.• Some competitions you have to pay to enter like the optional competition questions on the

TV.

My BriefWhich structure/structures will the Vegetarian Recipe Cards brief use? Reference your reasons for choice/choicesIt has aspects of a lot of different briefs and it is a commercial contract to some extent.

This is because you are asked to make the recipe cards as if you are media business that does graphic design. It has aspects of tender because it’s kind of an idea being published by a client then we are taking it up. The only thing not making it tender is we have full control over what happens and how we do anything. Its informal because there is no written agreement. We are motivated to fill out all the requirements due to the fact that it will affect our education if not.

Reading the BriefWhy is important to thoroughly read your brief?It is important to thoroughly read your brief because one thing not read right can mess up the

whole project. You are needed to understand what has been asked of you.If you are not able to understand what is been asked of you, you can be working on something

which is completely wrong, for example, these recipe cards are specifically aimed at vegetarians. You might not see this and just think they are normal recipe cards for anyone.

Reading the BriefWhat is the nature and demand of the Vegetarian Recipe Cards brief?

The nature of the Vegetarian Recipe Card Brief is to design eight different recipe cards that is aimed at specifically just vegetarians.

The final product can be any recipe cards showing any kind of vegetarian foods. For example, the brief gives examples, and states that you could just base it one vegetarian food in a specific country, or based on one certain ingredient. It needs to show a professional standard of work and needs to have a consistent theme through out. The images can be found anywhere you please as long as they look professional and appropriate.

There maybe a deadline for when the product needs to be created so making sure you time keep efficiently is very important. The client may have a distribution date for the product and letting him down could let down every chain link on the way. Time constraints and man power come hand in hand because an extra pair of hand could be the difference between finishing on time and losing the contract all together.

Negotiating a BriefWhy is it important to discuss the brief with your client prior to production?This is important to do because a lot of people like to add in their own little thing into the

projects that they are working on. People tend to do this without noticing themselves even doing it too. Your client may not like this, so, the only way to clear this up with your client, is to ask them. If they think that it is fine, then it is all good.

The brief may also not have a lot of information on it, which makes you wonder if you can do certain things to it. This is why it is best to discuss this with the client before hand.

Negotiating a BriefWhat are the advantages and disadvantages of employing discretion with a brief?

The advantages of showing discretion with a brief is that you can win a clients trust with your ability to comply with what they want and create more of a team working bond. Its best not to cause any offense to the people you are working with so discretion is defiantly needed so as not to come across too opinionated especially if your the one on the pay check.

A disadvantage is that you might have to with hold information at a certain point to keep the contract. Doing this could lead to something going wrong but at the same time revealing it initially could blow the whole thing. Good strong judgement is needed to negotiate a project properly. You need to know every aspect of what you are doing so that you yourself don’t get the short straw and loose out at some stage in the deal. Clients can be difficult and refuse to pay if things aren't completely up to scratch, so making sure that both sides of the spectrum know exactly what is going on is key.

Negotiating a BriefAre there any potential legal/ethical/regulatory issues with the brief’s proposed product?

When finding pictures for the recipe cards. We need to make sure that they have no things that could be seen as racist on them. The pictures also need to be copyright free, which means we will probably get the images from a picture library or just take them our self.

Negotiating a BriefAmendments you have considered to;The Product: It could infringe laws that exist without meaning to initially, so to improve it you may

have to make changes to, keep it kosher. The project itself could be too extravagant to actually follow through with so cuts may need to be

made for it to be realistic.

The Budget: When talking about amending the budget there are only two different ways that you can go. That is either a down scale or an upscale in terms of the money coming in. If you have to rise the budget and the funds are actually there this tends to be easier because you can stick to the original plan an carry on. If you have to down scale you have to make sure that this is in the right areas so as not to lower the quality of the product.

The Conditions: If the conditions are to be amended it needs to be done before the contract is fully signed. The reason for this being that if you find out that you have to do more work than what was originally discussed you will obviously need to get paid more. When a contract is signed a contract is signed and it is very difficult to get a client to pay more for what they want when the deal is done. You have to have a good client employee relationship for a contract to properly work.