Creating the Perfect Design Brief: How to Manage Design for Strategic Advantage (repost)

The design brief has finally been de-mystified! Once considered a simple set of directions that was handed down to the designer by a disengaged manager, it has evolved into a multi-lateral, strategic business tool.

The creation of these super briefs is the subject of a new book by author Peter L. Phillips entitled "Creating the Perfect Design Brief: How to Manage Design for Strategic Advantage." The first title to analyze the secrets of successful design briefs and their management, this book successfully and comprehensively outlines a document, a process, and a discipline that places strategic thinking and objectivity at the core of a relevant design project or program—using words, concepts, and criteria every business manager will understand and appreciate. Published by Allworth Press with the Design Management Institute, Phillips’ book is a critical tool not only for designers and design managers, but for marketing, marketing communications, and engineering managers involved in a design project.

Many organizations still view design merely as a decorative service function and overlook its vast potential as a core, strategic business resource. The design brief can help designers and managers change that perception by making each stakeholder part of the creation process. Creating the Perfect Design Brief covers all the essential elements of the brief: assembling the team; developing the design brief; project overview; category review; target audience review; company portfolio, business objectives; phases; scope, time line, and budget; and research data. Designers and design managers will learn how to:

• Rethink design, and design management as a strategic process
• Establish mutually valuable relationships with the design brief team
• Receive substantial and timely input from upper management
• Create a design brief that can deal with changes
• Use the design brief in project tracking and as a tool to measure return on investment.