Something I keep running into with small freelance projects is that jobs with almost no brief force a different kind of decision making. You have to construct the reader, the tone, the goal, and the argument basically from scratch using whatever thin context the client gave you. It's uncomfortable, but the output tends to feel more like a real choice than when you're working inside a detailed spec. The detailed brief jobs are easier to start but harder to own. You're filling in blanks rather than making actual calls, and when something doesn't land you genuinely can't tell if it was your writing or the assumptions baked into the brief itself. The nobrief situation strips that out. Everything in the draft is yours, which is clarifying even when it's stressful. For what it's worth, I think I learned more about my own defaults from three poorly briefed projects than from ten welldocumented ones. What I haven't figured out is whether that benefit scales. Once you're working with bigger clients who have brand guidelines and research decks, the skill you build from winging it might not transfer cleanly. Or it might be exactly the foundation that lets you push back usefully when a brief is overloaded with assumptions. Curious if people find the lowbrief work genuinely useful for developing instincts, or if it just builds habits you have to unlearn later.   submitted by   /u/Embarrassed_Rip_7532 [link]   [comments]