ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVES BRIEF
-By Melanie Kyles (Slow Hand Creative Studio)
Overview:
As a creative practitioner, you will often be required to work in ways that challenge your perspective or skillset, considering budget, timescale, function, relevance and client needs. Problem solving and adaptability are key to thriving in these situations, to gaining new knowledge and experience and putting yourself in a stronger position as a professional creative.
Using the design tool, the ‘Morphological Matrix’, you will outline and explore your own hypothetical client brief that connects to your chosen discipline, considering current trends, key contemporary factors and bringing your creative development to a final creative outcome.
Objectives:
1. Understand the Morphological Matrix as a creative tool and recognise the benefits of using this method to generate fresh and innovative concepts.
2. Step outside of your comfort zone to respond to a unique brief that makes the most of your personal skillset, recognising the creative potential and adaptability of your skills.
3. Gain creative confidence by applying creative problem solving to inspire an original and innovative project outcome.
For this brief you can use the prompts and respond in any format, for example, you could explore embellishments like Melanie’s own practice, or develop something that relates to you, like an accessories collection or garment.
What is a Morphological Matrix?
The Morphological Matrix is a creative tool designed to break down projects into key elements to explore different combinations, generating fresh, innovative ideas and allowing you to push the boundaries of your creativity. As well as being used to generate your brief, this method can come in useful for client projects, personal work or responding to emerging trends.
Activity:
Create your matrix! With each row numbered, your headers will be Trend, Reference, Outcome and Client. Make sure your outcome column is viable for your creative discipline but challenge yourself beyond your usual parameters, as this can generate innovative and original outcomes. You can use AI to generate random client personas and creative references to complete your matrix.
2. Once your Morphological Matrix is complete, roll dice for each column to create your brief. Feel free to generate a few combinations and choose the combination that you most align with.
3. Write your Morphological Matrix outcomes into a brief and fill out the details in a way that makes sense for you. For example, the above image could read as follows:
With sustainability in mind, apply contemporary needlework skills to a guitar inspired by the theme of entomology. Your client is a tech-savvy start-up founder, John, aged 32, who lives in a city apartment he owns, living with his miniature dachshund Rolo. Although he lives in the city, he has a great appreciation of the natural world, often driving out into the countryside to take Rolo on walks. He owns a guitar but has never learnt to play. As his guitar is more of a showpiece, he really wants it to have more visual impact than it currently has, and applying contemporary needlework inspired by his love of entomology will make it completely unique.
You can use Ai to assist with the generation of random words and brief summary.