What Is A Good Design Brief? A Must Read For Everyone

Hi there guys! Today, we have a really interesting topic to talk on and we are excited to share this side of advertising with you all. So, if anyone of you is planning to join the field of advertising / marketing at some point in their life, then this blog is for you guys. Keep reading to know more!

Most of you must have heard the words ‘design brief’ being uttered more than they should have, really and most of the times, the people who are working on the design brief are complaining about how vague or unclear the directions were. And we decided to pick that topic up and explain everything right here in our today’s post so that you can know and understand what a design brief is. This blog will also help you in judging the good and the bad about a design brief as well.

In simpler words, a design brief happens to have the directions for the creative and design department of an advertising agency. Those directions or pointers help the team members in brainstorming ideas, creating design sketches, drafting copy / content and once everything gets finalized, the graphic designers take it from there and produce the artworks.

But it is important to mention here that crafting a design brief itself is a task and not many people are good at it – that is literally the main reason why most creative managers or heads and designers are seen running from one department to another to know the design requirements.

Now, we do understand that there are many individuals who might not be good at explaining what they want when it comes to creating designs but if a design brief is not clear or has loopholes then a daily task can take up to several hours or may be even days to get completed. Also, there are many brand managers (no offense to anyone!) who change the design briefs after the submission of design options which is not a really good practice but it also wastes an entire department’s time and efforts too.

So, how do you write a brief that is self explanatory, doesn’t have any unclear requirements and also doesn’t have deadlines that are humanly impossible to meet?! Is this a “one man” job or do you have to hire a new team member to draft design briefs for you? Do you have to learn content writing for this task? How many days are required to write a design brief, anyways?

Those are a few questions that must be crossing your mind right now but we want you all to know that it is not a difficult task and anyone can do it within minutes. Here is how:

First things first; you need to know your brand or project inside out to know exactly what you want from your creative / advertising agency – without having thorough understanding of the task, you won’t be able to ask what you require.

Okay so here are some suggestions:

The best way to go about a design brief is to create important points (USP) so that it is easier for you to write it but it is also understandable for your agency to go through and work on eventually.
Start by describing the project / task in totality to make your other team members understand what it is going to be about.
You must also mention the objectives as well as the goals as it will help the account management team and design team with understanding what’s required, what the timelines are, when to go live and hit the screens or social media platforms, outdoor ads, press ads, indoors advertising etc.
In addition to that, it is also important to mention the budgets and design requirements* for the respective teams to look at and work on.
If you are working on multiple platforms like TV, conventional advertising mediums, social media platforms then you must also clearly mention the exact date and time(s).
Target audience must also be mentioned so that the designs are created keeping in mind what age group is being targeted for the entire communication.

*Design requirements deserve a separate post as most people are unable to ask what they want to see in a design. Let us help you with that too!

For mentioning the design requirements in your design brief; make sure that you know the platforms you are going to cover and how they are operated. Then you should cover the following points:

Dimensions and resolutions (keylines for packaging)
File formats e.g (psd, ai, indd, figma, sketch)
Color palettes, color combination (that are to be used) or Pantone
Associated documents (Stock images, prewritten copy material, logo design vector files)

This is all for today, guys! We hope that with our today’s post, you will be able to write insightful design briefs for your internal teams as well as for your creative / advertising agency. And if you liked our tips then don’t forget to share your feedback in the comments section down below!