Brief encounters: how to write a brief that gets you what you want

I do love a good brief.

There’s something really satisfying about opening one and knowing exactly what’s needed: who it’s for, where it’s going, when it’s due and what it needs to achieve. Those projects tend to run smoothly from the very first draft.

And then there are the briefs that say, in their entirety, “Something modern. Like Apple, but not.”
We’ll always get there in the end. It just takes a couple of phone calls and a little bit of detective work to delve into what “modern” means to that client.

A lightweight brief feels quicker to write, but it doesn’t save any time. It just moves the time, usually in delaying the start date whilst we gather answers, or worse it can delay the deadline because it gets spent on amends.

The good news is that writing a brief that gets you what you want isn’t complicated. It just needs to answer some important questions.

A brief is the start of a conversation

When a brief lands in our inbox, we’re really trying to get inside your head. What are you picturing? What’s its objective? Who’s going to look at it and decide whether it’s worked?

The more of that you can get down on paper, the more time we can spend on making the work brilliant – rather than working out what the work is.

So, here’s what we’d love every brief to cover. It’s ok to say “I don’t know”. Knowing a gap exists early is far more useful than one everyone discovers later.

1. Start with what it’s for, not what it is

Most briefs start with the thing: “We need an A5 leaflet.” That’s helpful, but it isn’t the most important part. The most important part is what you want that leaflet to do.

Is it there to sell tickets? Get people signing up? Explain a change to your service? Make you look credible to investors? Each of those leads to a really different piece of design, even when the size and format are exactly the same.

This is the part of the brief we read first, and the part we come back to whenever there’s a decision to make.

2. Show us the bigger picture

Very few pieces of design live on their own. Whatever you’re briefing – a brochure, a website, an exhibition stand – is probably one part of something bigger. It might sit alongside social posts, a landing page and an email campaign as part of a product launch. Or it might be the first step in changing how people see your brand.

Knowing that helps us make sure everything pulls in the same direction. It also helps us spot opportunities, like designing something that works across the rest of the campaign, so you’re not starting from scratch every time.

3. Tell us who it’s for (and “everyone” doesn’t count)

“Adults aged 25 to 65” covers an awful lot of people with very little in common. A finance director skimming something on their phone between meetings needs something very different from a retired couple reading a brochure over a cup of tea at the kitchen table.

The more real your audience feels, the better we can design for them. What do they already know about you? What do they care about? What might put them off?

Three ways to refine your audience

4. Where will people see it?

Where something ends up shapes almost every design decision. A billboard has about three seconds to make its point. A trade show stand needs to work from across a busy hall. A social post has to hold its own in a feed full of holiday photos and everyone else’s adverts.

It also decides the practical details, which are easy to forget until the very end. It’s worth including:

• Every size you need. An A4 flyer can often turn into a square graphic for social, an email banner and a magazine advert. Knowing that up front means we can design for all of them from the start.
• The formats. Print-ready PDF, PNG for social, or editable files for your own team.
• Print requirements. Things like bleed (a little extra image around the edge, so nothing important gets trimmed off), paper stock and any special finishes. (P.S. we are more than happy to advise or guide you with this!)
• Platform or publication rules. Magazine ad specs, character limits and so on.

5. When do you really need it?

“ASAP” is one of the most common deadlines we see but, it could mean tomorrow, next week or before the end of the quarter.

There are usually two dates that matter, and they’re rarely the same:

• When you need it in your hands. The launch, the event, the day the campaign goes live, or in the case of direct mail when it needs to arrive in your customer’s hands.
• When it needs to be finished. For print, that’s the printer’s deadline, which can be a week or more earlier.

It’s worth thinking about your own sign-off time too. If three people need to approve the design and one of them is away next week, it’s much better to plan for that now than to discover it the day before print.

6. What’s going in it?

Design and content go hand in hand. It’s really difficult to design a page properly without knowing whether it’s holding 50 words or 500.

So let us know what’s going in, and how final it is:

• Copy. Is it written and signed off, still a draft, or would you like us to write it? Is there any flexibility for us to suggest changes?
• Images. Are you supplying photography, or do we need to source images or arrange a shoot?
• Must-haves. Logos, partner logos, contact details, legal text, terms and conditions.

In our experience, late content is one of the most common reasons a deadline slips. It’s rarely anyone’s fault. Content often needs approval from people who aren’t involved in the design, and that takes time.

7. Do you want it exactly as briefed, or are you open to ideas?

This is the question that gets missed most often, and it makes the biggest difference.

Both answers are completely fine. Sometimes you know exactly what you want: you’ve sketched it out and you need someone to bring it to life properly. Other times you’ve got a problem to solve, and you’d love us to come back with something you hadn’t thought of.

What causes trouble is not knowing which one it is. If you wanted it as briefed and we get creative, it can feel like we haven’t listened. If you wanted fresh thinking and we play it safe, the result can feel a bit flat. We might ask you where this brief sits on an imaginary scale of creativity – are you looking for something simple and effective, or something entirely different?

In our experience, the best briefs are clear about both.

A few things that trip briefs up

Before we wrap up, here are a few things we see more often than you’d think:

• “Can you make it pop?” Tell us what “pop” means to you. Is it brighter, bolder, more playful? A couple of examples of what does (and doesn’t) pop for you will help us get it right, first time.
• Too many cooks. If lots of people will be feeding back, agree who has the final say before the first draft lands.
• The moving target. Objectives sometimes change halfway through, and that’s OK. Just tell us, so we’re not designing for the old one.
• The missing budget. It can feel awkward to share, but it helps us recommend what’s realistic, rather than designing something that costs a fortune to print.

The brief, in brief

If you take one thing from this, make it these questions:

1. What’s it for?
2. What’s the bigger picture?
3. Who’s it for?
4. Where will people see it, and what size does it need to be?
5. When do you really need it?
6. What’s going in it?
7. And how much freedom do we have?

Answer those, and you’ve written a brief that gets you what you want – usually first time.

And if you’re stuck on any of them, that’s completely normal. It just tells us where to start. If you’ve got a project coming up, our design and brand support page explains how we work with teams like yours.