HOW TO BRIEF A DESIGN STUDIO SO THE WORK COMES BACK RIGHT THE FIRST TIME
Most marketing delays are not caused by design. They are caused by the brief.
A thin brief creates assumptions. Assumptions create revisions. Revisions eat the timeline, and by the third round both sides are tired and the work is worse than the first attempt.
The irony is that the fix costs twenty minutes.
THE SEVEN THINGS A BRIEF MUST CONTAIN
1. The decision you want the audience to make. Not "raise awareness". What should someone do differently after seeing this?
2. Who they are, specifically. "Brand managers" is not an audience. "A marketing manager at a mid-size manufacturer who has been burned by an agency before" is.
3. Where it will appear. A concept that works as a full-page ad may not survive a WhatsApp forward. Formats change the idea, not just the artwork.
4. What is fixed and what is open. Mandatory logos, legal lines, approved claims, colours that cannot move. Say which constraints are real and which are habit.
5. Who approves, and in what order. The single most useful line in any brief. If there is a stakeholder who sees it last and changes everything, name them at the start.
6. The real deadline and what it is tied to. A print slot, an exhibition date, a launch. "End of month" invites a different pace than "the press books on the 14th".
7. What you have tried and what happened. The previous attempt, the reason it failed, the thing the MD did not like. This is the highest-value section and the most often omitted.
THREE HABITS THAT SHORTEN EVERY PROJECT
Brief once, verbally and in writing. The conversation catches what the document misses. The document catches what the conversation forgets.
Consolidate feedback before sending it. Three stakeholders sending separate contradictory notes produces one confused revision. One consolidated list produces one good one.
Give reasons, not instructions. "Make the logo bigger" gets you a bigger logo. "The brand is getting lost against the photography" gets you a solution you had not thought of.
WHAT A GOOD BRIEF BUYS YOU
Fewer rounds, a shorter timeline, and a studio spending its energy on the idea rather than on decoding what you meant.
Want the template? We will send the brief format we use with retained clients. Use it with us or with anyone else.
