Design Strategy for Creative Professionals

Design Strategy for Creative Professionals

“We have reached the end of this course! Thank you for joining me. Remember, we are visual people, and strategy is a different language. Like with all language learning, the first step is to gather new vocabulary and retrain how you listen to it. You'll need to learn to speak and understand it before starting to translate it. You'll know that weaving strategy into your creative process is working when you can defend the work without being defensive. When you can take what you've been given and at a glance fill in the blanks, rewrite a flawed document like a creative brief, know what questions you need to ask to get the answers you need, or, most importantly, lead your client with recommendations that win business, grow accounts, and move needles. The most valuable lesson I learned is that clients come to us for various reasons, and ask different forms of the same question. They're asking you "What should I do?", and we have to know what we think before they ask us. Everyone has an opinion, but clients pay for our analysis. However, many creative people—if we're honest, most of us, myself included—were taught to focus on the tactical parts of what should be more significant strategic decisions. So we must retrain how we listen, be concerned with things outside the creative team (skills and systems), and focus on our process and presentation. You must practice, listen to yourself, and understand what environment you need to create and optimize your efficiency. You can weave strategy into your creative process with a little practice and patience. The next time your clients come to you, you'll have far more than a red, green, and blue option. You'll have a recommendation. The 5 Most Important Steps 1. I'd like you to consider one of the three ways you can produce the course project. • If you're creative or have a small business, you can apply the whole process to develop your own business. • If you have clients or work at a creative agency, you can apply this tool to one of your current projects. • If you want to act as a creative consultant but don't have clients of your own, you can use Mauro Martins as your case study and suggest your own thought starters for him. 2. Become familiar with the Creative Strategy Framework and the 4 columns. Start by defining targets in demographics, psychographics, and behavioral attributes. Decide whether the project should be focused on the brand or a particular product or service within the brand, and then look for facts. Define the features—a tangible attribute that defines the product and its benefit. Complete the fourth column and determine what the target should take away from the communications. 3. Frequently, we must play detective in our research because the briefing process and people involved only give us pieces of the puzzle we are being tasked with solving. Having the Creative Strategy Framework chart in front of you to organize your notes will help you to begin developing relevant solutions that are on brand, strategy, and message. 4. Start to pull the threads between the information. This tool is flexible because the resulting strategic threads can be used in brainstorming as thought starters to inspire creative executions, to write or focus a creative brief, or—as the basis for a pitch—to develop three separate innovative concepts or scenario analysis. 5. It's time for the scenario analysis! Look to the three threads that I presented at the end of Unit 4 as an example of how you'll prepare yours. You'll find a PDF file to download and use as a template as well as all the material I produced during this course for reference. To finalize your project, post a video in the forum with your analysis explaining the risks and rewards of one scenario over another. You can share your work by clicking the "Create your project" button. I will look at your publications as soon as possible and answer any doubts that need clarification. In the meantime, I encourage you to see what your fellow students have been up to and comment on their posts! See you soon!”

Partial transcription of the video

“ Final Project Hi, everyone. If you made it this far, you've reached the end of the course and I'd first like to say congratulations. In my experience, getting creatives to willingly learn strategy has been about as pleasant as getting a tooth removed at the dentist, so you have my respect for being concerned with things outside of the creative team. This choice to invest in yourself and your future will all but ensure your success. I've enjoyed our time and I hope that it has benefited you. I've learned the most over time from my friends whether they were my professors, peers, or colleagu...”

This transcript is automatically generated, so it may contain mistakes.

Course summary for: Design Strategy for Creative Professionals

• Level: Beginner
• 100% positive reviews (21)
• 1283 students
• 4 units
• 17 lessons (3h 38m)
• 11 downloads

• Category

  Marketing & Business

• Areas

  Business, Design Management, Presentation Design