Blog, Working with designers, 6 min read
How to brief a designer so you get what you pictured
Most bad design outcomes start at the brief. Six things to send, and one question to answer before you send anything.
When a project goes wrong, it is rarely because the designer could not design. It is because two people had different pictures in their heads and neither said so out loud. A good brief is not a long document. It is a short one that answers the right things.
Answer this first: what has to happen?
Not what you want made. What you want to happen after it exists. "A deck" is not a brief. "A deck that gets a second meeting with a fund that has already said no once" is a brief. The first gets you slides. The second gets you slides built around an objection.
Six things to send
- The goal, in one sentence, in the form above.
- Who sees it, and where. A phone, a boardroom projector, a printed leave behind. These lead to different designs.
- The content, or as much as exists. Rough is fine. A blank page is not.
- Three examples you like and one you hate, with a line on why. The one you hate is often more useful.
- Your brand files, or permission to decide. Say which.
- The deadline, and what it is tied to. "Friday" and "Friday because we pitch Monday" get handled differently.
Say who approves
One name. If three people approve, the work will be designed by committee and will end up looking like it. If it genuinely needs three people, gather their feedback yourself and send one consolidated response. A designer receiving three contradictory comment threads will either pick one or average them, and averaging is how things get bland.
Give feedback on outcomes, not on pixels
"Make the logo bigger" is a solution. "It does not feel established enough" is a problem, and a designer can solve a problem three different ways, one of which might be better than a bigger logo.
The exception is when you genuinely mean the specific thing. If the legal line has to be 8pt, say 8pt.
Do not send the brief in five messages
Write it once, in one place. Every extra channel is a place for something to get lost. We start projects from a single document that both sides can see, and anything agreed on a call gets written back into it the same day.