Every designer has opened a brief and thought: this tells me nothing. Vague objectives, no context, conflicting direction, and a deadline that was yesterday. The result is predictable — rounds of revisions, missed expectations, and frustration on both sides.
A good creative brief fixes all of this before the work starts. It does not need to be long. It needs to be clear. Here is what to include and what to leave out.
What the Project Is
Start with the basics. What are you making? A brand identity, a landing page, a social campaign, packaging, a pitch deck? Be specific. "We need some design work" is not a brief. "We need a four-page product brochure for a trade show on the fifteenth of May" is a brief.
State the deliverables clearly. List every item you expect to receive at the end of the project, including formats and sizes. If you need a logo in SVG, PNG, and reversed-out versions, say so upfront. Do not assume the designer will guess.
Who It Is For
Describe the audience. Not in demographic jargon — in real terms. Who are these people? What do they care about? What are they doing when they encounter this piece of creative? A brochure picked up at a trade show is a different context from a social ad seen while scrolling at midnight.
The more specific you are about the audience, the more targeted the design can be. "Small business owners in the UK who are considering switching accountants" is useful. "Professionals aged 25 to 55" is not.
What You Want It to Achieve
Every piece of creative should have a measurable objective. Drive traffic to a landing page. Generate enquiries. Increase brand recognition at an event. Get people to download a resource. If you cannot articulate what success looks like, the designer cannot design for it.
Be honest about priorities. If the primary goal is lead generation and brand awareness is secondary, say so. It changes the design approach entirely.
Tone and Style Direction
Show, do not just tell. Include examples of work you admire — from competitors, from other industries, from anywhere. Explain what you like about each example. Is it the colour palette, the typography, the layout, the photography style?
Equally important: show what you do not want. If there are styles that feel wrong for your brand, include those too. Knowing what to avoid saves more time than knowing what to aim for.
Brand Assets and Constraints
Provide everything the designer needs: logos, brand guidelines, colour codes, fonts, existing photography, copy. If the copy is not written yet, say so — it affects layout decisions. If there are mandatory elements — a legal disclaimer, a partner logo, a specific tagline — list them.
Constraints are equally important. What cannot change? What is fixed? If the headline is approved by the board and cannot be altered, the designer needs to know that before starting, not after presenting three options with different headlines.
What to Leave Out
Leave out design solutions. Do not tell the designer to "make the logo bigger" or "use blue because our competitor uses red." You are hiring a designer for their expertise — give them the problem, not your version of the solution.
Leave out vague adjectives without context. "Make it pop" and "make it modern" mean different things to different people. If you want bold colours and strong typography, say that. If you want clean whitespace and minimal design, say that instead.
The Simple Template
If you want a starting point, answer these questions:
1. What are we making and in what formats?
2. Who is the audience?
3. What should this achieve?
4. What is the single most important message?
5. What tone should it strike?
6. What examples do we like and why?
7. What brand assets exist?
8. What are the constraints?
9. What is the deadline?
Answer those nine questions clearly and you will produce a better brief than most agencies receive. At Brilliant, our briefing process covers all of this before any creative work begins — it is how we deliver work that hits the mark first time, not fifth time.
Planning a creative project? Book a call and we will help you shape the brief.
