How to Create an Effective Design Brief

What is a Design Brief?

A design brief is a short, easy-to-understand project management document that outlines the details and expectations of a design project. Design briefs are the starting point for any design project. They serve as a guideline that helps designers focus on the right details and deliver great work and can help confirm a client’s wishes before any work gets started. They’re beneficial for freelance designers as well as in-house design teams.

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The creation of a design brief may be a collaborative process that employs active listening between the clients and the designers, so that both parties are comfortable with the design process and that enough relevant information about the project is shared. It’s a means to keep the project on track and can act as a guide for both the client and the designer to refer to if there is a disagreement or if one party feels as though things are not headed in the right direction.

Why Do You Need a Design Brief?

When starting a new project, a design brief not only helps to keep everyone on the same page, but it also helps an agency or design team to understand the needs and particulars of their client. Other benefits of a design brief include:

• Assuring the client that their opinion is valuable and necessary to the project.
• Helping the agency gain information about the client’s brand and the audience they’re targeting.
• Inviting the client to take an active role in the project.
• Deciding on a reasonable budget and timeline for the project before any work begins.
• Understanding the quality of work that’s expected and the specific types of deliverables that the client needs.
• Aligning the agency and the client on a shared goal and the steps to meet that goal.

What is Included in a Design Brief?

The following elements should appear in all design briefs:

Project overview

This section should be a clear description of your project and should cover what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Maybe you’re refreshing a tired logo with the hopes of connecting with a younger audience. Perhaps a client has requested a custom package design to hold a new project that’s about to be sold in stores.

There are a few questions to consider when creating a concise overview:

• What are we building?
• Is there a problem that needs to be solved with this design?
• What is unique about the client and what does their company do?
• What are the client’s needs and how can those needs be met?

When the overview is finalized, it acts as a summary for the entire project that can be referred to by the client and the agency as needed.

Goals and objectives of the project

Making a distinction between goals—which describe the overall purpose—and objectives—which are measures of success—are crucial to completing a project. The agency or designer and the client need to be on the same page; these goals and objectives need to be unambiguous and concrete to avoid any future issues.

A few things to consider when clarifying a client’s goals and objectives include:

• What does an ideal outcome for this project look like?
• Why do you want to redesign something that already exists? What do you want to achieve?
• Is this the first time you’ve tried to solve this design problem?
• How will we measure success? What will mark this project as being successful for the client?

Client’s target audience

The agency should take the time to understand who the client is trying to reach with this design project. A website designed for a teenage audience won’t be as successful if the target audience is retirees. Similarly, the client should know what kind of audience they’re trying to reach. In many cases, they may already have developed a persona of their ideal customer that helps the agency.

If the client doesn’t already have a persona for this project, there are some questions you might ask to get a better understanding of their target audience:

• Describe the customer’s age, race, and gender.
• How often does the customer shop with you or use your services?
• What are some adjectives or terms you would use to describe this customer and their personality and where they are in life? Are they bookish? Design-oriented? Exuberant? Parents? C-level executives?
• How does your product or service benefit your customers?

It’s also important for the agency to understand the client as a business and what makes them unique. Have the client describe their organization and products in layman’s terms so that there can be no question about how they define themselves.

Budget and timeline

One step that should never be ignored in a design brief is a detailed section about the project’s budget and expected timeline. Clients may lack the understanding of how long each step in the design process may take, and may expect an unlimited number of edits, all of which take additional time. A clear budget that has a little wiggle room for unexpected changes or difficulties is ideal, as is a rough timeline that aims to be realistic while keeping everyone on track.

When putting this section together, the client and the agency need to be frank about their expectations, how much things cost, and how long things take.

• Are there budget constraints on this project? Is there any flexibility?
• Are there internal deadlines that this project needs to align with?
• What are the key milestones for this project?
• How long should it take for the agency to receive feedback from the client?
• How many rounds of edits are built into each stage of the project? Is there a cost breakdown for additional edits?

Competitive landscape

Analyzing your client’s competitors can help the agency understand how to create a design that will make the client stand out. This step will further define the client’s desired audience and will help guide the direction of the design plan.

When seeking to understand the competition, there are a few bullet points to include:

• Who does the client consider to be their competitors?
• What designs have been successful for the competition?
• Are there any aspects that make the competitors stand out in their field?

This knowledge can help solidify the client’s brand identity, as well as how they can fill a gap in their market. Armed with the knowledge of what already exists in the competitive landscape, the agency can decide on the angle of the design project and deliver something that fits with the client’s desired brand identity. Things to consider here might include the tone and image of the client’s brand as it relates to their customer base and their competition.

Project deliverables

In this section, the agency and the client agree on what will be created during the project and what will be presented at its completion. There are a lot of variables at play here, depending on the size, scope, and budget for the project. As with the budget section, take the time to determine exactly what will be delivered to the client at the end of the project so there can be no misunderstandings.

Make sure that the agency and the client agree upon:

• File formats that the work should be supplied in.
• Sizes and resolutions of the files.
• Specific designs and the number required.
• Types of physical work that will be submitted to the client.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all design brief template that will work for every agency and every client, including the information above will help you to organize your information and help your project to be a success. A thorough design brief can ensure that when you deliver your work to the client, you’ll be able to deliver a winning presentation.