How to brief a designer when you have never hired one
You do not need design vocabulary to write a good brief. You need to answer six questions honestly. Here they are, with what a designer is actually listening for in each one.
Most first briefs arrive as a sentence: we need a new logo. That sentence is already a conclusion, and often the wrong one, because the thing that is failing is rarely the thing the client noticed first.
You do not need to learn design language to fix this. You need to answer six questions in plain terms.
1. What does the business actually do?
Not the positioning line. The mechanics. Who pays you, for what, and how do they find you in the first place? A designer who does not understand how the money moves through your business will design something that looks correct and works against you.
Three or four sentences is enough. “We install commercial HVAC systems. Ninety percent of our work comes from three contractors who have used us for years. We want to reach architects directly” is a better brief than two pages about values.
2. Who is the person you are trying to reach?
One person, described specifically. The actual human who signs off, described as a person rather than as “businesses in the region”. What are they worried about? What would make them not choose you?
The reason this matters: nearly every real design decision is a decision about who the work is speaking to. Without that, decisions get made on personal taste, which is how projects end up in the third round of revisions with nobody able to say why they prefer option B.
3. What is not working now?
Be blunt. “Our website looks dated next to competitors” is useful. “We lose people at the quote stage” is more useful. “Our own staff are embarrassed to hand out the card” is the most useful thing you can possibly say.
You are not expected to diagnose the cause. You are expected to describe the symptom accurately.
4. What has to exist at the end?
List the deliverables you can already name. A website, a logo, packaging for four products, a pitch deck, signage for two vehicles. Then say what you are not sure about.
If you do not know, say that too. “We need to look credible to European buyers and I do not know what that requires” is a legitimate brief and a much better starting point than a guessed list.
5. When is it needed, and why then?
A trade show, a funding round, a product launch, a rebrand announcement. Deadlines driven by a real event get planned around. Deadlines with no reason behind them get compressed for no benefit, and quality is what gets removed to fit.
If there is no real date, say so. It usually produces a better project.
6. What are you prepared to spend?
This is the question people most want to avoid, on the theory that naming a number invites the quote to rise to meet it. In practice the opposite happens: without a range, a designer has to guess at scope, and guessing produces either a proposal that is too big to accept or one too small to be any good.
A range is enough. “Somewhere between five and ten thousand, and I need to understand what the difference buys” is an excellent thing to write. It lets the proposal be shaped around what you can actually do.
What to leave out
- Solutions. “We want a blue minimalist logo with a swoosh” closes down the work you are paying for. Describe the problem; let the direction be argued.
- Committee opinions. Collect them later, at a defined review point, from named people. A brief assembled from five conflicting preferences produces a design that satisfies none of them.
- Fifteen inspiration links with no comment. Three, each with one sentence saying what specifically you like about it, is far more useful, and often reveals that what you liked was the photography, not the design.
What happens after a good brief
A designer should come back with questions, not with a quote. If the first response is a price and a timeline with nothing challenged, you are buying production rather than judgement. The questions are the work starting.
If you are about to commission brand or web work for the first time, write me a few lines about the business and what is not working. You will get an honest view on whether I am the right person, which sometimes means telling you that you do not need what you thought you needed.
Common questions
What should a design brief include?
What the business does, who it sells to, what is currently not working, what has to be produced, when it is needed, and roughly what you are prepared to spend. Everything else, such as style references, colour opinions and competitor links, is useful but secondary.
Do I need to know what I want before contacting a designer?
No. You need to know what is not working. Diagnosing the actual problem is part of the work you are paying for, and a designer who takes your self-diagnosis at face value without questioning it is not doing that part.
