Collaboration Brief Session 1

The Session.
Reflection form.
Before going to the session we all had to fill in a form about what we will be doing for the collaborative brief and what our partners will be doing throughout this brief.
Why have you chosen to work with your creative partner? What are your aims?
I have chosen to work with Emily Lodge, she is very efficient in the way that she works, she is also very assertive, so if she doesn't like something she will say. This is a good thing to have in a partnership. Our aims are to get the brief done and not argue too much. I have always liked the designs that Emily has done previously and am looking forward to working with her.

What are your specific areas of creative interest in this brief?
The briefs we have chosen are Oasis, Cath Kidston, British Council and The Royal Albert Hall. I think that because the Oasis is about creating clever and inspiring messages for in store, this is something I will help produce to do, produce fun and inspiring quotes. I also enjoy illustrating, which will also help me with these briefs.

What specific design skills do you have to offer in relation to your chosen brief? How do you intend to use them?
Use of clever, short quotes. Also for the Cath Kidston brief, it is creating a new surface pattern, this is something that would also interest me as I could create small illustrations for the surface pattern.

What specific non-design skills do you have to offer in relation to your chosen brief? How do you intend to use them?
Although my organisation in terms of blogging is very poor. For the actual brief itself I am good at organising my time and always get my work done on time. I think that this is something that Emily will add to the collaboration, as she is very good at managing her time. I am very punctual, therefore I would never miss a meeting. I am confident when talking to people I don't know, which means I will be able to contact people if we need to.

What will your specific roles be in the collaboration in relation to your brief?
Depending on which brief we chose from our four briefs, me and Emily will work together through the briefs and make the decisions together. We will assign specific roles after establishing our initial ideas together.


In this session we went through all the briefs that me and Emily chose, writing down all the pros and cons so that we can choose which brief we should do for our collaborative brief.
Oasis.
Pros.

• Very open brief
• Friendly
• Cross Media (in store and online)
• Potential to twist the brief into an ad campaign.
• Can all be digital to produce, this will be good for us, as it will have a low production cost.

Cons.

• Oasis are deluded about their brand.
• Neither of us have done interior design before.

British Council.
Pros.

• A lot of resources
• Wide range of things we can do.
• A lot of this that we have to do.

Cons.

• Has to be bilingual
• Wide range of stuff that we have to do.
• There is a lot of things that need to be produced.
• Have to use film.
• The cost for doing this brief will be very high.

Cath Kidston.
Pros.

• Simple outcome
• More time to take the brief further as its so simple.
• Can all be digital, therefore it will be a low cost.
• They know exactly what they want.

Cons.

• Very specific target audience, maybe too specific.
• Too small brief for two people to do.

Royal Albert Hall.
Pros.

• For charity
• Cross media

Cons.

• Telling a story
• Not compatible with neither me nor Emily.

We decided that we would go for the Oasis breif as we found that we thought there are more possibilities for this brief, we also felt that this brief was more compatible for us. We then wrote out our roles and responsibilities that we both had for ourselves and each other, this is a form of a contract so that if anything goes wrong, we can go back through our contract to see what we were  both suppose to do. We decided that before we decide the roles and responsibilities, we should go through our initial ideas for the brief.

We only briefly went through the ideas we had, but this gave us the opportunity to assign general roles and responsibilities.

After doing this we realised that it is very difficult writing what roles and responsibilities we would have, when we don't know what we are wanting to do for our brief yet, this is why we decided to do a mind map of what we thought we would be doing, so that we could get some initial ideas down. As a large group we then went through what roles and responsibilities are suppose to be.

Roles.

• Project management (time)
• Resources
• Contact/Communication

Responsibilities.

• Style/Brand guidelines
• Research activities
• Fulfilling your agreements
• Working to deadlines
• Maintaining clear communication