What Is a Design Brief, and Why You Should Have One

Design is important. Set yourself up for success by writing comprehensive design briefs.

Design and branding are critical aspects of every business, so understanding how to interact with and hire designers is crucial when developing new products, websites, marketing campaigns, or web designs. 

If you’re a business owner or need to work with designers, you’ll need to learn to create a design brief, even if you don’t necessarily have any background in understanding design.

When outsourcing your design work, you will have much greater success if you completely understand what a design brief is and what elements go into completing a design brief because your designer will understand your vision and can better execute your plan.

With that in mind, we talked to Sophia Chow^[1], a designer with years of experience creating everything from packaging, websites, children-book illustrations, and more, to get her insights into why design briefs are essential and what goes into a good design brief so that everyone is on the same page.

Sophia Chow, Designer^[1]

What is a design brief?

A design brief is a document written either provided by the client or asked for by the designer that defines the overall goals and scope of the upcoming design project. It should let the designer know what deliverables they are expected to create and how long they have to make them, and it should lay out any constraints such as budget or stylistic requirements. It should work as a roadmap or blueprint that informs design decisions and guides the entire project from conception to completion.

Once a design brief has been created, all parties should know exactly what is required to complete the project. It should help your designer or design team make their design process simple and executable.

What should be included in a design brief?

A good design brief should be comprehensive and include several key elements.

Business identification

Include your name, email address, and name of your business, as well as a brief description of your business and what it does. The designer or design team needs to know all of this so they can start crafting their design around your brand identity to ensure it fits.

Project overview

Provide the designer with a clear and concise description of your project. To execute a successful design project, you need to tell the designer what you’re creating, what problem you’re trying to solve by making it, and what assets you need the designer to complete to accomplish these goals.

The project overview section doesn’t have to be long, but it should tell the designer everything they need to know to understand the project’s goals and objectives.

Target audience

To have a good design, you need to understand what you and your designer need to understand your target audience. If you’ve already developed personas of your ideal customers, share those with your designer. If you haven’t, take some time to think about who you want to buy your product or engage with your business. What do those people like? Does a certain style evoke images of them?

How old are they? What are some of their characteristics? How would they interact with your product or service?

Style guidelines

Alongside your audience, you need to provide the designer with more intangible things like the mood or feeling you want to evoke in your customers when they interact with your brand. This might take more time to conceptualize, especially if you haven’t considered it before.

Look for other brands in your industry that you like or evoke a similar feeling you want to convey. Give your designer examples of their work as inspiration so they have a starting point. Look for brands and inspiration your target audience is excited about, and try to distill what makes those brands stand out.

Conversely, this is an excellent place to provide your designer with any do-nots. If you have a style or design aspect you do not want to be included, be sure to include a description and provide examples so they know to avoid certain elements.

Timeline and budget

Both parties need to clearly understand the budget and schedule before beginning any project design. As a business owner, the cost of good design work can sometimes feel overwhelming, so you and your designer or design agency must be on the same page regarding scope and project expectations so that you are satisfied with what you’re getting for your budget.

Additionally, you need to provide the designer with a clear roadmap and timetable for them to complete deliverables. If you need it relatively soon, emphasize that so the designer can better prioritize their schedule. If you are planning multiple stages, provide a specific timeline for each stage of the project so they know how long they must complete each one.

Keeping the project on track and avoiding conflicts and scope creep are crucial to any successful design project. That said, both the budget and schedule should be realistic and allow for some wiggle room because something you didn’t account for might happen during the project that needs to shift things one way or another.

Why is writing a design brief so important?

Without a good design brief, your project will lack direction, and you are more likely to end up with something that doesn’t hit the mark, leaving you dissatisfied with your project. Additionally, it will make the designer's job harder, especially if you hire outside of your company because they aren’t involved in all of the ins and outs of your business. They don’t understand your business the way you do, so they won’t be able to make a design that fits your business without your help.

Additionally, you might not know how to verbalize what you’re looking for in a short meeting, so if you’re able to provide examples of what not to do or specific examples of what you would like to see, your designer or design team is more able to help provide you with something that is more aligned with your goals.

Chow reiterated the importance of having a written design brief during her workflow:

“Having all the relevant information written down so that I can reference it is great because it means I don’t have to keep going back and forth with my client. I know what vibe they want and what message they want to give to their clients.”

Sophia Chow

Completing a design brief prompts you to think about your design project more comprehensively. You might have understood that you needed some new package designs, but knowing you need them and trying to vocalize exactly what you are trying to convey in the design are two different things. By spending time developing the design brief, you will have a greater understanding of your brand and the goals of your product, which will help you reach your target audience more effectively.

What types of projects should you develop a design brief for?

Simply put, if your project has design elements, you probably need a design brief for it, and the more comprehensive and thought out the design brief, the better the product or service will be in the end.

What resources are needed to develop and roll out design briefs? 

At the very least, you need a collaboration tool that allows you to create and distribute your design brief to all stakeholders. This should include you and the designer, but it might also have your head of marketing or distribution or any other important stakeholders who will need to provide input into the design brief.

If at all possible, use software that allows easy document sharing and collaboration such as Google Docs.

Suppose you’ve found that you’ve outgrown cloud-based document sharing. In that case, you might consider more robust project management tools where different teams and stakeholders can bring in all relevant documents, share them, and collaborate all in one place. This solution is excellent if you have large projects with differing timelines. If your design is one part of a larger project, project management solutions can help you meet your deliverables timelines by keeping all stakeholders involved on task.

Most businesses don’t have in-house designers, so collaborating and hiring either freelance designers or a design agency will be standard. If you have more specific needs, you can hire an agency specializing in particular areas like graphic design, logo design, user experience design, or web design.

Design is important, so set yourself up for success

From web design to marketing, design is a critical part of your business’ success. It’s how you present yourself to your audience. It’s how you attract new customers. It’s how you stand out on a shelf. That’s why it is crucial to take it seriously from the get-go by developing comprehensive and robust design briefs.

Think hard about your project and provide your designer with a project overview, budget, timeline, audience information, and style guidelines to maximize the chance at success. 

If you need more help with different elements of design for your business, check out these other great resources:

• Key Logo Design Principles That Will Make Your Logo Stand Out

• Top 7 Design Tips To Create Your Business’s Logo