Starting a new project
Read our guidelines for creating new on-brand work, or updating your existing communications, and find out how to work with the Digital and Creative Media team.
The best approach
If you’re starting a new project that involves some creative work, this is the process you should follow:
The advantages of doing this are having access to the right resources, using our expertise and staying on brand.
You will get the best results by taking this approach.
Defining what you are trying to achieve
The best creative work succeeds as a result of clear objectives and good planning.
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Identify the audience
You probably already know this but it’s worth being clear in your mind about who your audience is.
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Define your audience’s needs
What is the problem you are trying to solve for your audience? For example, the audience may not know how or when to do something. Try to think about evidence or insights through your work that demonstrate the problem.
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Check if new work is needed
Find out whether this need is being met somewhere else. Is another part of the University already covering some or all of this work? Do you need to work collaboratively with them as a wider piece of work?
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Think about how to answer your audience’s needs
Once you know your audience, the problem you are trying to solve and your role in the process, you’ll have a clearly defined objective. You can now start forming the message that would help to answer the audience’s needs.
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Identify who needs to be involved
Find out who will be involved in the project from the beginning to make your work a success. You can work out who will write the brief and who should sign off the project.
Working with us
The Digital and Creative Media team helps you plan your communications as a whole to ensure all creative work:
- meets brand standards
- offers value for money
- complies with accessibility and sustainability best practice.
Working together achieves better results than planning items individually, and helps you take advantage of the whole team’s resources and expertise.
We’ll work with you in a channel-neutral way to refine the messaging and help you plan the best channel mix for your project.
The team needs as much information as possible about your audience and their needs. Capture these details by writing a project brief.
Writing an effective project brief
You can evaluate your requirements by filling in a creative project brief. This document should be approved by all of the key people at the outset. Checking back at the brief keeps you on track and helps you evaluate the project’s success.
The creative project brief outlines:
- your target audience and what you know about them
- the problem you’re trying to solve for your audience
- how the project will support your team’s (and the University’s) objectives
- how much time we have to work on the project
- the budget
- how we’ll measure the project’s success.
Contact
After you’ve written and submitted your brief, we will review it and aim to respond to you within two weeks.
We may advise on one or a combination of the following:
- selecting the right channels and resources
- tying together the look and feel with other work as part of a wider campaign
- getting a designer
- working with the team to pair-write or brand-check your content
- self-service, where you can use guidance on our website and any additional brand assets needed to complete the work.
If we decide to work more closely with you on a particular project, we will arrange a meeting to discuss timescales and plans.