Briefly: A Film

This is a fantastic documentary short film on the question of what is a brief and how it can drive exceptional results. The film specifically deals with creative work in design, advertising, architecture and illustration, but everyone who is kicking off a big project should consider a utilizing a brief with these critical elements. It could be the difference between poor and exceptional results.

Every project starts with a brief. But very few projects end up with exceptional results. Why? As a disruptive brand and design strategy firm that creates briefs across multiple creative disciplines including Advertising, Design, and Innovation, Tom Bassett, CEO of Bassett & Partners (and founder of MindSwarms), was curious to understand how some of the world’s most consistently exceptional creative talents thought about – and used – the brief. Through a series of one-on-one interviews with Frank Gehry (Founder Gehry Partner), Yves Béhar (CEO fuseproject), Maira Kalman (Illustrator), John C Jay (President @ GX, Partner @ Wieden + Kennedy), David Rockwell (CEO Rockwell Group), and John Boiler (CEO 72andSunny), we asked them to elaborate on how they define – and use – the brief to deliver exceptional creative results. The end goal of Briefly is to help inform and inspire future generations of collaborators to write better briefs and manage the briefing process differently in order to help lead to exceptional creative results. So while every project will still start with a brief, the dream is that more projects end up exceptional because of how these creative titans inspire (or re-inspire) the way we all think about briefs.