What the Brief Doesn't Ask
CATEGORY—Studio, Perspective
Words: Natasha Maben
1 min read
It arrives with scope, timeline and intention. The questions underneath them are usually missing. I do most of the work in that gap, between what’s asked and what’s needed, following an idea past the obvious answer to see what it becomes.
First, looking. At the brief, at the field it sits in, at the distance between where something is and where it needs to go. For a while I touch nothing. This takes longer than people expect.
Then, asking what the brief didn’t.
What would you never do, even if it worked?
Who is this not for?
What do you hope the identity will fix?
What are you quietly worried people will think?
The answers are rarely the ones in the brief. Sometimes they are the project.
Next, considering what the brief took for granted.
Finally, refining. Most projects arrive carrying more than they need. The work is in knowing what to set down.
My practice is small, which leaves time to look at a project for as long as it needs. It doesn’t scale.
Much of the thinking happens between meetings, and it matters as much as what comes out of them.
What emerges is a system, with an internal logic that holds across scale, surface and time, and a shared visual language: specific enough to be recognised, loose enough to be used with confidence by someone who wasn’t in the room.
The aim is work that reads the same from the outside as it feels from the inside.
If any of this sounds like your own brief, it’s probably worth a conversation.
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