6 min read
What to put in a design brief
The difference between a brief that gets what you pictured and one that generates three rounds of revisions, with the questions worth answering before you pay.
Describe the business, not the design
The most useful brief spends its first paragraph on what you sell, to whom, and what makes someone choose you over the shop next door. A designer can translate that into visual decisions. They cannot reverse-engineer it from "make it modern".
Name your actual customer. "Everyone" is not a target audience, and it produces work that speaks to nobody in particular.
Show, do not adjective
Words like clean, modern, premium and bold mean different things to different people. Three reference images end that argument in ten seconds.
Include references you dislike as well. Knowing what to avoid narrows the field faster than another example of what you like.
State the constraints early
Where will this be used? A logo destined for embroidery on a uniform has different constraints from one that only lives on Instagram.
Is there existing brand material that must survive? Colours already printed on packaging, a typeface already licensed, a name that must stay legible in Arabic and English.
Any hard no? A competitor colour, a symbol with the wrong connotation, a style the founder hates. Say it in the brief, not in revision two.
Be honest about the decision process
If four people have to agree, say so before the work starts, and get their input into the brief rather than into the feedback. Most revision spirals are not design problems. They are a stakeholder who was never briefed.
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