The Free things in life are best.

Public service advertising and design should be a win-win experience. The non-profit client gets professional design and creative services for little to no cost. Meanwhile, the creators get an opportunity to build their portfolio or win industry awards by working in an environment free from many of the usual restrictions that come with "for pay" projects. 

Regrettably, many well-intentioned projects have left bitter tastes in the mouths of creatives and clients alike. In the vast majority of these cases, the problems could have been prevented if only there had been a clear understanding up front of each party's responsibilities and roles. 

That, in short, is the purpose of these guidelines: To spell out for all concerned how they should approach pro-bono work, to make the process a smooth one, and the results, a success.

Guidelines for Clients

Scroll Down to See Guidelines for Creatives

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

 1. Ask to see the portfolio of the creative group you will be working with.

Look carefully for similar projects to the work you're asking for. If you don't like what you see, or sense these people work in a style that's not appropriate for your organization, keep looking.

2. Contact references of other non-profits your creative group has worked for.

Find out whether your creative group has handled pro-bono projects before. If so, get contact info on those clients and then get in toch to ask these questions about your potential creative team: Were they responsive to client input? Did they stay on top of deadlines and budgets? Were they concerned about the effectiveness of their work?

3. Develop a creative brief that outlines your assignment.

If your creative group doesn't have a "start work" or creative brief form, create one yourself. It should cover the following points, ideally in a single page:

> What precisely are you asking to have done?

> Who the audience is for the project; include demographic and lifestyle information?

> What specific action are you asking of your audience (Buy a ticket? Change an opinion? Call for more information? Make a contribution?)

> What is the best strategy to get them to take that action? Focus on the one, primary reason why people should take action--don't ask the creative to try to cover too much.

> What are the budget and timing issue?

> What are the mandatories (logos, credits, legalisms) that must be included?

> What should the tonality of the work be?

After you've prepared your creative brief, have it signed off by every person in your organization that will later have an opportunity to accept or reject the creative work.

DURING THE CREATIVE PHASE

4. Be prepared to give your creative group more time than you would allow if paying for their services.

Obviously, pro-bono work gets less of an agency or design firm's attention because paying the bills must necessarily come first. So, give ample lead time when assigning projects, and build in extra time for the inevitable delays.

5. Give your creative team the maximum amount of creative latitude. This can actually benefit your organization, because more experimental, unusual solutions tend to be more memorable and effective. Moreover, if the work done for your nonprofit generates talk, publicity, or recognition in social media, you are actually further extending the reach of your message.

6. Line up as many of the pro-bono production services as you can yourself.

Agencies and design firms are often glad to help you secure low-cost or no-cost production assistance from video production companies, photographers and illustrators, but they often have a limited number of favors they can call in. If at all possible, use the resources of your organization to seek these in-kind donations.

7. Be willing to sacrifice service for quality creativity.

Since this is not the typical client/vendor relationship, you should consider taking some extra steps to minimize the time your creative group spends on non-creative activities. For example, keep the number and length of meetings to a minimum.

DURING THE APPROVAL PROCESS

8. Have everyone who can say "no" in the room when the work is presented.

It is more efficient, and certainly more courteous, to allow your creative contributors to present to everyone in your organization who can ultimately shoot down the proposed work. This way, the creative team can present and defend their work more passionately than you could.

9. Be clear and specific if you have objections.

If there are parts of the solution that aren't on target, speak up. This is far preferable to letting the project progress and then raising your objection later after more effort has been invested. It's also important to distinguish between your personal dislikes and those parts of the job that might make it less successful. Your creative contributors are (rightly) concerned with making the project work against the target audience--of which you may or may not be a member.

10. If you have an unresolvable dispute over the creative proposal, bring in an arbitrator.

One of the unwritten rules of pro bono work is that the client must be quite flexible when it comes to approving the creative work. Still, there will inevitably be times when you feel the work is not acceptable. If this is the case, and your creatives don't agree, bring in a third party to help resolve the issue. Advertising and design educators, freelancers, or creative directors from other firms could be called in.

11. If you ultimately do not accept the creative proposal, give your creatives the chance to start over.

While your confidence in your creative contributors may not be at its highest after rejecting their first proposal, you owe them the chance to take another shot before turning to another creative resource.

AFTER THE PROJECT IS COMPLETED

12. Be generous in giving credit and recognition to your creative contributors

At the conclusion of a successful pro bono project, your organization may have received work worth thousands of dollars. It's highly appropriate to acknowledge these contributions through personal thank you letters, mentions in organization newsletters, and even appropriately small gifts. This isn't just a matter of courtesy, this display of gratitude will also make it easier for you to secure additional help when you need it in the future.

13. Assist your creatives in using the work for their own self-promotion.

If it's appropriate, put a credit line somewhere on the work. Make sure your creatives receive sufficient reprints for their promotional use. And be willing to assist them in public relations efforts by being accessible to the press for quotes and interviews.

Guidelines for CREATIVES

Scroll Up to See Guidelines for Clients

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

1. Understand the mission and activities of the client organization.

Before you commit to doing any work, have a legitimate understanding of what the client organization does. Make sure you wholeheartedly agree with their philosophy and practices. If they don't voluntarily offer to give you a background presentation on their organization, be sure to ask for one.

2. Contact references of other creatives who have worked for this client.

Ask the client to provide names of other design and advertising people who have worked for them. Call to find out their impression of the client's input and approval process, and if they gave sufficient creative freedom.

 3. Show the client your portfolio.

Even if this is your first pro-bono project, show the client representative samples from your paying clients or student work. They should be able to get a very clear picture of your creative style and experience, so questions aren't raised later.

 4. Present a creative brief that outlines the assignment.

If you don't customarily use a "start work" or creative brief, develop one for pro-bono projects. It should cover the following points, ideally in a single page:

> What precisely is the client asking to have done?

> Who the audience is for the project; include demographic and lifestyle information?

> What specific action should the communications materials ask of the audience (Buy a ticket? Change an opinion? Call for more information? Make a contribution?)

> What is the best strategy to get them to take that action? Focus on the one, primary reason why people should take action--don't ask the creative to try to cover too much.

> What are the budget and timing issue?

> What are the mandatories (logos, credits, legalisms) that must be included?

> What should the tonality of the work be?

After you've prepared your creative brief, have it signed off by every person in the client organization that will later have an opportunity to accept or reject the creative work.

DURING THE CREATIVE PHASE

5. Insist on creative latitude.

While you should never ignore a client's needs and objectives, it is perfectly appropriate to insist on creative latitude as a prerequisite to taking on the project. This can actually benefit your client, because more experimental, unusual solutions tend to be more memorable and effective. Moreover, if your work generates talk, publicity, or recognition in creative competitions, you are actually further extending the client's message.

6. Establish a schedule and stick to it.

Everyone understands that pro-bono work will take a back seat to paying jobs, but that doesn't give you license to flagrantly ignore a client's schedule. Like any business or organization, your pro-bono client will have deadlines they need to meet.

7. Record your time and expenses.

You should keep track of your work on a pro-bono project the same way you would for any other assignment. You'll not only be able to track your productivity and the actual cost of your contribution, you can also use this information to "bill" your pro-bono client when work is complete so they can know the value of your in-kind contributions.

DURING THE APPROVAL PROCESS
8. Insist that everyone who can say "no" is in the room when the work is presented.

You should present to everyone in the organization who can ultimately kill your work, so they have a chance to hear your best persuasive arguments. Also, if there are objections, you'll hear them directly, without filtering and reinterpretation.

9. Explain your approach completely and carefully.

Remember that your pro-bono client probably doesn't get involved in advertising and design projects on a routine basis. So don't take things for granted. Explain all the steps involved in your thinking process. Clearly demonstrate the difference between comp layouts and final production. Avoid use of industry jargon. Use examples of completed projects where appropriate to help clients grasp the final look you're aiming for.

10. If you have an unresolvable dispute over the creative proposal, bring in an arbitrator.

If you find yourself defending work that the client is completely unwilling to accept--and you feel it still has merit--bring in a third party to help resolve the issue. Advertising and design educators, freelancers, or creative directors from other firms could be called in.

AFTER THE PROJECT IS COMPLETED

11. Send an invoice to show the level of your contribution.

At the conclusion of a project, send a memo invoice to your client showing the value of your services. This way they'll gain a better understanding of the worth of professional design and advertising services, and they may also need to know the value of your contribution for their tally of in-kind donations.

12. Ask to hear about the results of your efforts.

There is a misconception (possibly deserved) that all design and advertising people care about is the work itself and the possibility of winning awards. You can help dispel that notion by making sure you're informed of the effectiveness of your efforts. By understanding what worked and what didn't, you'll also be in a much better position to assist this pro-bono client (as well as all your clients) on future projects.

Why we still believe in content design, too.

Quick Read: Content design pros acknowledge that hiring of content designers and UX writers has slowed – particularly at Big Tech firms — but the long-term outlook for the practice is good. They offer tips future job-seekers can get started on now to be prepared for the next wave of hiring.

At the end of July, Nicole Alexandra Michaelis, a content designer and host of the excellent podcast Content Rookie, penned an article in UX Collective titled, “Why I no longer believe in Content Design.”  It caused quite the stir, sparking comments, debates, rebuttals, and this question from one student in SVC’s Content Design Certificate Program: “Am I now three-quarters of the way down a dead-end road?”

At SVC we did what we always do when faced with a puzzling industry question — we consulted industry experts. Fortunately, we know a lot of them, as our instructors are all senior working professionals.

You’re not imagining a downturn.

Tracy Fontaine, a senior staff content designer at Navan and formerly a content designer at Meta, began her answer with a welcome helping of empathy. “Oof, I can understand how content design students and career transitioners are disheartened at the moment. So are folks with years of experience. Alas, the tiny optimist in me still wholeheartedly believes that pursuing what excites you pays off.”

Another SVC instructor, Lenny Raymundo, a content design manager at Booking.com in Amsterdam, echoed Tracy’s sympathetic vibe. “I can understand how some junior/entry-level UX writers can find Nicole’s article scary. My take is that she feels frustrated about how our discipline is talked about in product orgs. We're thought of as more of an afterthought, and we need to do a better job making the case for the value of our UX writing teams.”

Torrey Podmajersky, the author of Strategic Writing for UX and principal of her new consultancy, Catbird Content, echoes the sentiment that students and professionals have good cause to be concerned. “It’s scary to face LinkedIn and other professional spaces where there are a few loud people expressing their pain about where they are in their content design careers, how it’s hard, and how it’s unfair.”

There are plenty of reasons for optimism.

So, yes, there’s a fair amount of uncertainty swirling around the future of content design. But, without exception, the professionals we spoke with see things looking up over the long run. And, in the short run, there’s reason to believe things may not be so dire after all. Torrey writes:

“There are solid reasons fewer design jobs are being posted these days.

”After a grueling pandemic and layoffs at major tech companies, a lot of hiring managers haven’t be allowed to hire for new roles until the end of 2023, or even next year — hence, there have been no jobs to post.

“What’s more, as interest rates have increased dramatically, small to mid-size companies are likely hunkering down, saving cash by not opening new roles, even if they need them. This will create pent-up demand for these roles in the next two years. 

“Finally, many tech firms over-reacted when announcing layoffs, and found that they eliminated positions they actually needed. As they rehire to fill those essential slots, they're often recruiting from their pool of laid-off employees, so those jobs never get posted. That helps to create the impression that job postings are down.

”Over the long term, design employment is expected to grow.

”The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates, “Overall employment of web developers and digital designers is projected to grow 23 percent from 2021 to 2031, much faster than the average for all occupations. About 21,800 openings for web developers and digital designers are projected each year, on average, over the decade.” 

”Content design is still in its infancy, and more adoption of the practice will lead to more hiring.

“A few years ago, it wasn’t unusual to see 10,000 job postings for product/UX designers, but it was rare to see more than 1,000 postings for UX writers or content designers. That was a ratio of 1:10 or even worse. Now, the ratio of job postings seems closer to 1:5 — suggesting that firms are seeing the value in content design — a strong sign for future job growth.


”The content design jobs are still out there, just not in Big Tech.

”The widely reported 150,000 tech layoffs of the past year were mostly from Meta, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and others. But there has still been hiring outside of tech. The reality is almost every company needs to be a software company these days. From getting dog food delivery (Chewy.com) to communicating with your doctor (Epic or MyChart), to paying your bills automatically (JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Bank of America), almost every industry will need high-quality, usable interfaces — and the people who can design them.”

Tips for succeeding in the job hunt.

While the points above do a good job of explaining the current hiring scene, landing that first job is still a tall order. Our instructor/practitioner panel suggests a few tips for dealing with a tight job market. 

Katherine Karaus, a senior UX writing and conversation designer for Google, points out that one way content designers can pivot their careers in a more viable direction is to get smart about Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models. “Many companies have content designers working on LLM projects, and language experts are crucial for ensuring the quality of the output these AI systems produce.”

She also suggests that now is a good time to build skills, freelance, volunteer, or do contract work. She says, “That way you'll be even more ready to snag an in-house role when hiring picks back up.” 

The pros say “stick with it.”

Without exception, the content designers we spoke with don’t believe the sky is falling and would encourage anyone who loves writing and digital experiences to stay the course. 

“The best advice I could give to folks starting out is this: I think it'd be a mistake to pivot away from UX writing just because of the current job market,” advises Lenny Raymundo. “If you really enjoy the craft, if you really enjoy building new experiences for people who use digital interfaces, there will be a job for you.”  

Referring back to the article by Nicole Michaelis that kicked this whole debate off, Katherine Karaus sees why it would freak out some would-be content designers. She says, “That article is very accurate on the challenges of the profession, but if you're excited about the work and game for those challenges, I wouldn't give up.” 

Tracy Fontaine even finds a poetic metaphor in the current employment situation, likening it to surfing. “We’re surrounded by waves — constant highs and lows, peaks and troughs — but we don’t tend to see ourselves as being in the midst of them. Know better than to fight the waves. Fighting waves does nothing but exhaust you. Jumping on your board and riding the waves is exhilarating.

“As students, you've been building your boards. You’re suiting up, building strength, and becoming more confident. You’re taking full advantage of the calmness of the trough, making sure you’re fully prepared to shred the heck out of the next wave the second it comes.”

The last word on this subject comes not from Torrey Podmajersky, but from some of the 900 people who have signed the Content Design Manifesto she has championed over the past several months. On the group’s Slack channel Torrey sees people expressing their joy for their career choice. In their words about why they signed the Manifesto, she senses hope and optimism:

• “Designing words is designing meaning. And that makes everything digital work (or not).”

• “I’m proud of my career as a content designer.” 

• “I believe in the power of content design.” 

• “What we do matters. ✌️😁📝📈❤️”

• “No matter how good [AI] gets, it can't bring the magic of a brilliant, flawed, energetic creative.”

These people all still believe in the future of content design. And so, at SVC, do we.

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Larry Asher is the director of the School of Visual Concepts, a professional development training center that's been helping designers and marketers advance in their careers for more than 50 years. SVC has offered certificate programs in UX design since 2015 and recently added a track for aspiring content designers. The School also leads in-person and remote team training sessions on design thinking methods, presentation skills, creative brief writing, and copywriting for Amazon, Nestle, Starbucks, Brooks Running, Zillow, Microsoft, T-Mobile, and many others.

Are we doing return-to-the-office all wrong?

You know what the world doesn’t need? Another article hand-wringing its way through the pros and cons of making people return to the office. Companies mostly like it. Employees mostly don’t. And the jury still seems way out on what the return-to-the-office will look like in the long run.

The reality is many of us are going back to the office a day or two each week for the foreseeable future. So the question isn’t, “Should we?” It ought to be, “Are we doing this right?”

Spoiler alert: No.

Take the all-too-typical case of Matt. When the pandemic and lockdown were in full swing, Matt moved his family to the outskirts of the city where he could afford a larger home with a separate home office and a yard for his newly acquired dog. It was truly making the best of a bad situation, and Matt and his family have grown to love their new neighborhood.

Then the major, major tech firm where Matt works insisted everyone come back into the office three days a week. So now he spends about five hours a week in a hypertension-inducing commute, while laying out $170 a week for parking, coffee, and lunch. That’s harsh, but the truly sad part of this story is what Matt does when he gets to the office — in his words, “pretty much exactly the same thing I was doing at home.”

Indeed, Matt spends the better (or worse, actually) part of his day on Zoom calls, meeting with colleagues who work in different cities, who are immunocompromised, or who have just decided not to come in despite the employer mandates. 

Since return-to-the-office requirements became commonplace, the use of video conferencing platforms has actually experienced an uptick according to Calendly.  In April 2023, 64 percent of meetings set up through the appointment scheduling software included videoconferencing or phone details, compared with 48 percent a year earlier.

Having people do in an office what they could do at home — especially an office that’s not all that easy or affordable to get to — makes as little sense as it sounds. And, yet, this is the M.O. in countless firms.

We recently fielded a survey asking if workers felt their team was taking advantage of their time together under the same roof. More than two-thirds — 69 percent — said they’re basically doing what they used to do remotely before return-to-the-office, while the remaining third felt their teams were, in fact, taking advantage of their proximity.

Is your team taking good advantage of your return to the office or are you pretty much doing what you used to do remotely?

Doing what we used to do 69%

Taking advantage of proximity 31%

If you’re going to ask people to do something they regard skeptically, shouldn’t you at least gain some benefit — and shouldn’t they? In other words, if you’re going to bring people into the office, doesn’t it make sense to very intentionally plan to have them do productive things together they can’t do nearly as easily via Zoom?

One of those activities that would take advantage of employees’ proximity would be in-person, interactive training sessions where the members of the team can collaborate, role-play, practice, and learn in the same cross-functional ways they’re doing their work. 

Learning how to apply a design thinking approach to brainstorming and vetting solutions is possible remotely thanks to tools like Mural and Figjam. But “possible” isn’t the same as “desirable.” And those digital whiteboards are no substitute for sitting around a table with your colleagues, jotting ideas down on Post-It Notes, and building rough prototypes out of Legos, modeling clay, and other dimensional, very real-world materials. 

Adding some fuel to this fire is a 2022 article from Insights, the online magazine of the Stanford Business School. An article subtitled, Why Virtual Meetings Generate Fewer Ideas,” references a study done at Stanford that showed in-person teams generated 15 to 20 percent more ideas than their virtual counterparts working on the same problem. The article explains, “People who meet in person get creative stimulation by visually wandering around the space they’re in, which makes them more likely to cognitively wander as well.”

Another learning situation where it makes sense to bring people together in the same space are training sessions designed to help team members become better presenters. Unless you imagine every presentation going forward will be on Zoom, and not in a conference room, there’s a lot lost when you can’t practice and observe each other in an in-person environment.

A final advantage of spending time together learning in person is vividly demonstrated during every Zoom meeting or workshop. At the beginning, everyone waits till the last possible second to sign on. At the end, they disappear just as fast. The point, it seems, of a Zoom session is to end the Zoom session. 

When you’re assembled in a room to learn something new, the tendency is just the opposite. People hang around, talk about the new skills they just picked up, and — on occasion — use their enhanced knowledge to start throwing out possible solutions to projects in the works.

Brainstorming, learning, learning to brainstorm, and the indefinable benefit of face-to-face social interaction are all advanced when you do them during your return-to-the-office time. That’s when to focus on the collegial parts of your work life, and save the more isolated, one-on-one action for those work-from-home hours.

Here’s an intriguing way to test this concept. Schedule an in-person workshop where the facilitator will introduce you to the methods of conducting a design sprint. Then use that session to come up with ideas for how you can maximize your time under the same roof. 

Being more intentional about what you all do when you’re together, and taking advantage of the power of proximity, could actually win some people over to the value of coming into the office. Let them Zoom from home. But let them excel together when at work.

Larry Asher is the director of the School of Visual Concepts, a professional development training center that's been helping designers and marketers advance in their careers for more than 50 years. SVC has led in-person and remote team training sessions on design thinking methods, presentation skills, creative brief writing, and copywriting for Amazon, Nestle, Starbucks, Brooks Running, Zillow, Microsoft, the University of Washington, T-Mobile, and many others.

How to write a UX case study (or a fairy tale).

The happiest day in a recruiter or hiring manager’s life is when they get the thumbs up to add some new talent to their UX or Content Design team. Turns out it’s also one of the most miserable days because now they get to wade through a mushrooming pile of portfolios and case studies.

Amazingly, some of the case studies they’ll attempt to peruse will be pushing the word-count meter into the red, clocking in at 3,000 words or more, and an ain’t-gonna-happen 10-minute reading time. You have to wonder if the budding UX pros who wrote them stopped to consider their user — that hiring manager. Did they even give a second thought to the many demands on her time before submitting a possibly disorganized, possibly uninteresting, and likely too-lengthy case study?

So what should you do to get the length down and the readability up when you write a case study? Consider a technique that’s been effective since Og ate those little red berries down by the river and croaked before he could get back to the cave. Yes, the story.

There’s been so much talk about storytelling that it’s easy to blow it off as another trend-of-the-moment, like Google Glass or avocado toast. But don’t. Storytelling is a legit and time-honored way to keep your audience from hitting the exits and dropping out of your case study before they’re even three paragraphs in.

The familiar cadence of a good story is something you’ll see in any kind of narrative that holds your interest. Detective novels, White Lotus, full-length features, and Grimm’s fairy tales are all built on the same foundation. You may have heard of Freytag’s Pyramid, and that’s what we’re talking about here.

We meet some characters, we generally kinda like them, they get wrapped up in some thorny problem, and then there’s a turning point where things turn out just fine or go especially bad. Either way, there’s some resolution where our characters usually live happily ever after (if they didn’t die).

So why can’t a case study jump on this same, successful, storytelling bandwagon? It can. It should. It must. The only little tweak is that the hero of these stories is you: The designer who conquered the thorny problem with a brilliant and logical solution.

Here’s how this might work. Let’s say your project is for a vacation rental website. Start by making us love the people who brought us this website. Remind us how they’ve been able to help homeowners make some extra money by renting out their spare bedrooms while giving travelers a true bargain on lodging. See? Don’t you love them?

Then we go talk to some travelers — potential users of the website — and they tell us one of their disappointments is going on a site like this one only to find scarce options for the days they can travel.

Sure enough, the site analytics show that for certain sets of days — like over holidays and school vacations — web visitors are bailing without booking a rental. When we learn this, we feel a collective sense of anxiety for our vacation rental website good-guy product manager.

Our hero appears — You! You come up with some intriguing ideas and lay them out for us. One of them is to pop up a modal when someone enters the desired dates of their stay that reads, “Can you be flexible?” You explain that there’s a UI control that lets the traveler set how many days in advance of their preferred booking, and how many days after their preferred departure date might work for them.

Then you explain how you tested this idea with travelers and 14.6% of them said they’d be more likely to book with this flexible dates option.

The product manager is happy. The travelers are happy. The hiring manager that read your case study is happy because you laid this out in an intriguing, concise way. And you’re happy because you just got a call back to come in for an interview.

Unfortunately, many case study writers will head down the storytelling road and then accidentally take an off-ramp where they go into way too much detail about the specifics of their recommendations or wax on about a new color palette they’re proposing that — while nice — didn’t really pertain to solving that original bounce rate problem.

A way you can keep your eye on the prize of story and brevity is to think of other stories that are compelling yet brief. You know this one. It’s the story of The Three Little Pigs, that first entered the culture around 1840. Figma was still nearly 200 years off, yet The Three Little Pigs remains the ultimate design case study.

As the story starts we meet the users: Fifer Pig, Fiddler Pig, and Practical Pig. They seem to be likeable lads, and their design challenge is a daunting one: How might we avoid being eaten by a wolf?

Whoever was providing the design inspiration put three pretty reasonable MVPs on the table. They could build a house out of straw, or sticks, or bricks. A round of usability testing showed that the first two designs were flawed. The third one, while it showed a lot of promise, had its own point of failure: The chimney.

The addition of a new feature cleverly installed in the fireplace did the trick. In a post-launch test with real wolves, the newly conceived Boiling Pot of Oil feature proved to be successful with 100% of impacted wolves suffering third-degree burns on their backsides.

Kudos to the designer for coming up with such an effective, heroic solution!

Now translate this same framework into your next design case study, and there’s a very good chance that you, too, will live happily ever after.

P.S. You just made your way through 964 words. Don’t make your case studies any longer than that if you want to improve their chances of actually being read.

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Larry Asher is the director of the School of Visual Concepts, a professional development training center that’s been helping designers and marketers advance in their careers for more than 50 years. SVC offers a year-long certificate program in UX Design and Content Design, which includes a course devoted to writing case studies. SVC has also led professional development team training sessions for Amazon, Nestle, Starbucks, Brooks Running, Zillow, Microsoft, the University of Washington, T-Mobile, and many others.

Live vs. later: What’s the best way to learn?

In this age of streaming, on-demand, curbside pickup, and instant everything, it only makes sense that taking a course by watching videos when it’s convenient for you has to be the better way to go, right? Can’t sleep? Get out of bed and learn something. Get a last-minute invite to a BBQ? Skip class and do your learning later. Distracted by the cat walking on your keyboard? Rewind and the instructor will repeat herself word for word.

It just makes so much sense. Except, of course, until it doesn’t.

So, before you sign up for a video-based course, known in the instruction world as “asynchronous learning,” consider this highly biased advice from a school that’s been teaching courses live for the past pre-YouTube 52 years.

Strike One: There is no classroom buzz with video-based learning.

With in-person classes, and even Zoom classrooms, there is an unmistakable energy that comes from getting a bunch of people together who share the same career goals. In the live world, discussions flow freely, questions get bounced around, and the class turns into a melting pot of diverse perspectives. That’s not just hard to replicate when you’re learning solo while watching a video. It’s impossible.

Strike Two: Videos can’t answer your questions right now.

Grasping the concepts of, say, how to conduct a tree test or using the auto-layout feature in Figma to wrap multiple elements can be stumpers if the video you’re watching didn’t explain what to do in a way that sticks with you. While you can watch and re-watch a video, you can’t say “Could you go through that again a little differently?” or “What do you do if the Figma plug-in didn’t install properly?” In a live class with an experienced instructor and an ever-helpful TA, the chances of your brain being left in the dust are next to nil.

Strike Three: Video-based classes are too easy to blow off.

Successful learning involves equal parts of motivation and accountability. With all the demands on your time, and the allure of a multitude of distractions, actually making yourself sit down to watch learning videos is harder than it sounds.

This is where the seeming convenience of asynchronous learning bumps up against human behavior. Indeed, LinkedIn reports that the completion rate for online classes hovers at around 10%. It’s pretty tough for a class to teach you something if you don’t go.

With a live class, on the other hand, you become part of a tribe of knowledge-seekers. The camaraderie and support from peers create an atmosphere and accountability that drives you to show up, participate, and go the extra mile. So, for that matter, does the simple act of having the instructor take attendance.

Strike Four: An instructor on a video isn’t going to join your job-hunting network.

That old saying about “it’s who you know” remains ever-so-true when it comes to job hunting. You need connections, and ideally ones with very senior, very connected, well-respected pros.

Those relationships are difficult to develop when you watch someone on a video. Schmooze them all you want, but the medium of a pre-recorded video means they can’t answer back and make you part of their circle.

The flip side shows up when you take a live class. When you’re in the room — IRL or via Zoom — with experienced instructors, they’ll get to know your name, your work, and your career objectives. In short, you’ll build relationships, which means your instructors can steer you toward their friends and colleagues who can help you at job-hunting time.

There is absolutely a time and place for learning from asynchronous videos. Ever try to replace a bathroom faucet, put type on a curved path in Illustrator, or use a pastry bag for cake decorating without them? They’re indispensable.

But, if you’re trying to get smart about an entire design discipline overflowing with nuance, subjectivity, and complexity, video learning falls short. Our advice instead is to sign up for live classes. Then, after your class is over, reward yourself by watching a more entertaining asynchronous video. Ted Lasso, perhaps?

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Larry Asher is the director of the School of Visual Concepts, a professional development training center that’s been helping designers and marketers advance in their careers for more than 50 years. SVC offers a year-long certificate program in UX Design and Content Design. All classes are taught live via Zoom. SVC has also led professional development team training sessions for Amazon, Nestle, Starbucks, Brooks Running, Zillow, Microsoft, the University of Washington, T-Mobile, and many others.

Behold the One-Sentence Creative Brief

Wouldn’t most of us say a well-conceived creative brief is a good thing? Done right, they make the work better by defining exactly what we’re trying to say and to who. Done wrong — or not at all—they lead to misfires, do-overs, and boring, ineffective work.

So, given all their goodness, why aren’t more people spending the time to write thoughtful, inspirational, well-structured creative briefs? It all goes back to that “spending the time” part. Good briefs take time. Great briefs take even more time. And time is one thing most of us never seem to have enough of.

Rather than toss in the proverbial towel and go back to directionless, brief-free project kickoffs, there is another way — the One-Sentence Creative Brief. Is it ideal? No. Is it better than nothing? Way.

When I run training for marketing teams on the creative briefing process, the One-Sentence Creative Brief shows up as the sixth item on a 14-part brief template, so it’s but one piece of a larger, integrated system. But the One-Sentence Creative Brief can be used on its own when there’s no time to work through the full brief. 

The reason this sentence shows up in the six spot is because it summarizes the discoveries made in the previous five sections. That means you’ll need to have some prior knowledge or do a little on-the-fly strategizing as you write your One-Sentence Creative Brief following this format:

(Audience) should (Think/Feel/Do) about (Product/Service) because (Single Most Compelling Reason).

Let’s break it down. The audience section is where you convey to the creative or design team who the effort at hand is aimed at. This is a great place to give some lifestyle hints rather than dry demographics. For example:

Moms who have reached the freak-out stage juggling work, kids, and keeping the house together…

People who believe they have a personal responsibility to help make the world a better place…

Tech bros who have ditched their cars because they don’t want to feel guiltier about contributing to global warming…

Next, we get to the behavior change we’d like the communications to prompt. Do we want our audience to know about something new (that’s a “think”), change their perception about a product or company for the better (that’s a “feel”), or visit a landing page to place an order (that’s a “do”). For example:

…should know there’s a service that will wash and fold the family’s laundry…

…should make others (especially members of Congress) aware of the scourge of child marriage by fearlessly joining our team of compassionate citizens,…

…should click to schedule a test ride…

The Product/Service piece of the sentence is pretty much a fill-in-the-blank exercise. For example:

…called LaundryOut.com…

…the World Vision Advocates,…

…of a VanMoof e-bike…

While writing the Product/Service info is the easy part, coming up with that Single Most Compelling Reason is where the true challenge lies. Here, you have to successfully come up with a few words that capture whatever it is that will incentivize your audience to change their mind or take some action. 

The best statements will give the creative or design teams enough specificity to focus their thinking, and yet not be so prescriptive that you kill their creativity out of the starting gate. This is also a place to avoid superlatives, overpromises, or vague statements like, “…because it is the best solution for anyone who wants an easy, affordable solution.”

Here are some worthy examples of statements that fit answer “most compelling” question:

…because you can tick this time-crushing task right off your to-do list.

…because you will feel you’ve done the right thing for children — especially young girls—who can’t champion this cause for themselves.

…because it has the design sensibility of Apple or Tesla with the conscience of Greta Thunberg.

When you put the components of the One-Sentence Creative Brief together, they provide in a compact, scannable form exactly the kind of touchstone statement creatives like to test their solutions against when they’re in the midst of brainstorming. 

For example:

Tech bros who have ditched their cars because they don't want to feel guiltier about contributing to global warming should click to schedule a test ride of a VanMoof e-bike because it has the design sensibility of Apple or Tesla with the conscience of Greta Thunberg.

With these 47 words that take only 10 seconds to read, designers, writers, and any kind of creative contributor can return again and again to confirm their ideas are solving the brief. And, for those situations where you want leadership’s buy-in, but you know they’re not going to wade through a multi-page creative brief, asking them to give their thumbs up to a 47-word sentence is a more-than-reasonable ask.

So, does the One-Sentence Creative Brief mean you can dispose of the one-, two-, or 17-page full creative brief? Yes, to the 17-page brief, because any brief of that length is too wordy to get a creative’s attention and should be disposed of. 

But the real answer to the question of ditching traditional briefs is “no.” If you have the time and brainpower to draft, circulate, and fine-tune a brief of a more conventional length, you should absolutely do it. That way the nuances and color commentary that can only be conveyed when you go beyond that single sentence can be shared with the creative team.

On the other hand, when you’re simply out of time, or you’re working on a minor project that doesn't seem to warrant a full brief, the One-Sentence Creative Brief can do 80 percent of the job with 20 percent of the effort.

When you think about it, doesn’t it just make sense that time-challenged marketing execs and PMs should start writing One-Sentence Creative Briefs because you’ll save your own stomach lining when your team produces work that’s so much more on-target right from the get-go?

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Larry Asher is the director of the School of Visual Concepts, a professional development training center that's been helping designers and marketers advance in their careers for more than 50 years. SVC has led team training sessions on the creative briefing process for Amazon, Nestle, Starbucks, Brooks Running, Zillow, Microsoft, the University of Washington, T-Mobile, and many others.