Shutterstock Custom now offers an intelligent creative brief-making tool

Shutterstock Custom, one of the photo archive’s services, is out with Smart Brief, which the company says helps improve the creation of creative briefs.

The idea is to speed up the creation and quality of creative briefs, which previously the platform had been provided through static online forms that served as templates.

Now, Senior Product Manager Raheem Ladha told ClickZ, an online wizard guides the user through creative brief types and other questions relating to the purpose, the requirements and needed professional services, and related content. Additionally, team members can now collaborate in real time on the same creative brief, with changes updated immediately.

Future versions of briefs for a given user are informed by previous briefs by that user and others, he said, with more weight given to briefs that have been successful. Success is measured by online feedback provided by users, after the brief has been delivered and utilized.

Ladha said that, while previous briefs took about an hour to create, the new tool lets clients create a brief in about 20 minutes.

Shutterstock Custom, an arm of the photo archive, provides custom content and services, such as visual identity definition and connections to professional talent, including local photographers as well as pre- and post-production services. The creative brief provides the guidelines and goals for what kind of content the client wants Shutterstock Custom to create, farm out or find.

Shutterstock’s massive collection includes licensed illustrations, vector imagery, videos and music from more than 900,000 contributors, totaling over 280 million images and more than 15 million video clips.