Most of the time creative competitions follow the typical blue sky approach to issuing a challenge; they don't tend to define parameters or any kind of real brief.
Creatives then have the huge task of narrowing their thinking down to something meaningful and strategic. You see this a lot with students with their challenges and projects, even at places that supposedly teach planning; the two disciplines sit at opposite end of the table and the strategists often have to force their way into the conversation.
Quite simply, a brief is not mandated and neither and the the creative work is rarely accountable.
Refreshingly, Steve Portigal, the king of design strategy, has made a move in the right direction.
Teaming up with Core 77 and 826 Valencia he's contributed a ton of research thinking to the challenge of imagining The Future of Reading. It's not simply a data dump, they've translated their findings into something close to a real brief with lots of juicy information to feast on. BRIEF:
What will reading look in the future? Will we be using printed books,
rectangular electronic devices, embedded technologies?This competition
challenges designers to envision a rich future digital reading
experience, based on a defined set of design research.
Recently, Portigal Consulting undertook an exploratory research project on reading, books, and digital reading devices, entitled Reading Ahead. Here's what they found:
Books are more than just pages with words and pictures; they are
imbued with personal history, future aspirations, and signifiers of
identity
The unabridged reading experience includes crucial events that take
place before and after the elemental moments of eyes-looking-at-words
Digital reading privileges access to content while neglecting other essential aspects of this complete reading experience
There are opportunities to enhance digital reading by replicating,
referencing, and replacing social (and other) aspects of traditional
book reading
And here's what they suggest for your design explorations:
