← All articles
How to write a brief for a designer
Seven questions whose answers save weeks of revisions and bring the result closer to what you had in mind.
Most endless revisions don’t start with a bad designer, they start with a vague task. A good brief doesn’t need to be long. It needs to answer a few simple questions.
Seven questions for your brief
- Who is your client? Age, situation, what worries them and why they are looking for you.
- What should a visitor do? Book, call, buy, send an enquiry.
- How are you different from competitors? One or two sentences.
- Which websites or brands do you like, and why exactly? Links without explanations don’t help much.
- What do you definitely dislike? This is just as valuable as examples you like.
- What do you already have? Logo, colours, photos, copy.
- Timeline and budget. Even rough limits help propose a realistic solution.
What not to write
“Modern, stylish, minimal” fits any design at all. Describe instead what the brand should make people feel: calm, energy, trust, luxury.
A brief isn’t a formality, it’s a shared starting point. The more precisely you describe the task, the less time goes into guesswork.