The difference between a design project that goes smoothly and one that doesn’t usually comes down to the brief. Not the designer’s talent. Not the budget. Not how much you like each other. The brief.
A good brief saves time, reduces revision rounds, and gets you a result you actually like the first time around. A bad brief leads to a designer guessing what you want and you spending weeks doing it again.
Here’s how to write one — plus a template you can use right now.
What a design brief actually is
A brief is a document that tells your designer:
- What you need and why
- Who it’s for
- What you already know about your business and audience
- What success looks like
- The practical constraints (budget, timeline, file formats, etc.)
It doesn’t need to be long. It needs to be honest and specific. A vague brief is worse than no brief at all — it creates false confidence that everyone’s on the same page.
The 7 things every good design brief covers
1. About your business
What do you do? Who are your customers? What makes you different from your competitors? Be specific. “We sell coffee” is less useful than “We run a speciality coffee shop in Bristol that focuses on filter coffee and attracts regulars who care about where their beans come from — not the kind of place that does flavoured syrups.”
If you have existing branding, share it. If you have an existing brand voice or guidelines, include those too. The designer needs to understand the world the design will live in.
2. The project
What exactly are you asking for? Logo? Brand identity system? Website? Leaflet? Don’t combine too many things in one brief — it muddies the water and makes the scope unclear. If you need multiple things, brief them separately or at least be explicit about what’s in scope and what isn’t.
Also: what problem are you trying to solve? A new logo because the old one doesn’t work at small sizes is a different brief to a new logo because you’re repositioning upmarket.
3. The audience
Who is this for? Not “everyone” — that’s not an audience, it’s a cop-out. Think about your actual customers: what they do, what they care about, what other brands they buy from, what they value in a supplier. The more specific you can be, the more targeted the design can be.
If you have customer research, include it. If you have testimonials or know what your customers say about you, share that too.
4. The tone and personality
How do you want to come across? Warm and approachable? Sophisticated and minimal? Bold and playful? Corporate and authoritative? Pick 3–5 adjectives that feel right.
Even better: show examples of brands you like (inside and outside your industry) and explain what you like about them. And show examples of brands you don’t like and explain why they feel wrong. Both are equally useful — designers need to know the territory you’re avoiding as much as the territory you’re aiming for.
5. What you definitely don’t want
This is the one most people leave out, and it saves a lot of revision rounds. If you hate corporate stock photography, say so. If you’re allergic to the colour orange, say so. If you’ve tried three different wordmark approaches and they all felt wrong, say so.
Negative direction is just as valuable as positive direction. A designer who knows what you don’t want can eliminate whole categories of bad ideas before they ever get presented.
6. Practical requirements
Where will this design be used? Website, social media, print, van signage, outdoor advertising, merchandise? The more context a designer has about how the work will actually be used in the world, the better decisions they’ll make about format, scale, colour, and detail level.
Also include: file format requirements, any technical constraints (print specs, platform requirements), accessibility considerations.
7. Timeline and budget
Be honest about both. If you have a hard deadline — a launch date, an event, a print deadline — say so at the start, not at the end. If you have a budget range in mind, share it. This isn’t negotiation — it’s information a designer needs to scope the project appropriately.
A designer who knows your budget can tell you what’s realistic within it. One who doesn’t will either over-quote (and lose you) or under-quote (and cut corners to make the margin work). Neither is good for either of you.
What happens when the brief is vague
The designer guesses. Sometimes they guess right. Often they don’t — because they’re not you, they don’t know your business the way you know it, and they’re filling in blanks with their own assumptions.
You end up with rounds of feedback that boil down to “that’s not quite what I had in mind” — without either of you being sure what “in mind” actually means. This is frustrating for both parties and expensive in time and money.
A good designer will push back on a vague brief and ask for more before they start. If a designer takes a vague brief and immediately starts producing options without asking questions — be cautious.
After you’ve written the brief
Send it to the designer before the project starts. Go through it on a call if possible — there’s usually value in talking through a brief even when it’s well-written. Make sure both of you agree on what’s in scope, what the timeline looks like, and what success looks like.
And keep it. A brief that everyone agreed to at the start is enormously useful when you’re three rounds of revisions in and something doesn’t feel right — you can go back to it and check whether the design is solving the problem you set out to solve, or whether something got lost along the way.
Download the free design brief template →
The template takes about 20 minutes to fill in properly. Every minute you spend on it saves at least 30 minutes of revision.
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