CMU School of Drama


Friday, April 01, 2011

Design Briefs

Props: "In fields such as graphic design, design briefs are used to define the scope of the project. A design brief is a collection of information defining the intended results of a project, as opposed to the aesthetics.
A good prop master or artisan has internalized the process of creating a design brief. The most important consideration in determining the construction of a prop is figuring out what the prop needs to do. For more complicated props, it may be helpful to actually create a design brief.

2 comments:

Daniel L said...

It's good that Eric stresses starting with an over-arcing goal for the project, regardless of discipline. I imagine that too often people will focus on the finished details of something and/or will take the terms given to literally, e.g., in Eric's example deciding that a table must be a table as opposed to a box. This post also emphasizes thinking about logistical elements for something aesthetic; an obvious analogy is chokepoints for scenery pieces. Overall, one of those blog posts that seems to go without saying but merits saying anyway.

James Southworth said...

This process really applies to any form of construction for the stage. These questions are asked of every scenery piece (hopefully) in a "put to detail" like meeting.

Jumping off this, one thing I've found is the struggle to keep all the answers to these questions in mind as you go forward with build. The solution I have found is if you can find a way to build the answers into your paper work, by say a form you fill out for each element that comes into your shop, the better all of these basic questions will stay prevalent throughout your process.