How to brief a designer: what to include and what to expect

A graphic design brief is a short written task for a designer: what the piece must achieve, for whom, where it will appear, in which sizes and by when. A clear brief and the brand rules you already have answer many of the designer's questions before the first file is opened; with a vague brief, those questions get settled in rounds of revisions instead.

Below: what to put in a brief, which technical details to settle up front, what to expect from the process, who owns the files, and when a template is a better answer than a new design.

What graphic design does for a brand

Graphic design is the brand's daily production: social media posts, ad visuals, banners, presentations, menus, packaging, signs. It is a different job from visual identity. The identity sets the logo, colors, typefaces and rules; graphic design applies them, week after week. We explain the difference in our article on logos and brand systems.

Consistency matters because of recognition. Jenni Romaniuk of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute describes distinctive assets as elements other than the brand name, such as colors, logos or characters, that uniquely signal the brand, and calls inconsistency in colors, fonts and logos the enemy of building them. So every post that ignores the brand's rules is a missed chance to strengthen those assets.

What to put in a brief

Aim for one page. It should answer seven questions:

1. The goal. What should a person do or understand after seeing it: book a table, notice a new product, remember a date.
2. The audience. Who sees it and in what situation: scrolling a feed on a phone, walking past a shop window, reading a menu at the table.
3. The message. One main line and, if needed, one supporting line. The final, approved text, before design starts. Text that changes after the layout is done means redoing the layout.
4. Where it will appear. Every placement and size: feed, Stories, a website banner, print. Each is its own layout, not a resize.
5. The materials. The brand book or rules, logo files, photographs you own, product details, and examples you like or dislike, each with a sentence on why.
6. Mandatory elements. Logo, address, legal text, prices, a QR code. What must be there, and what must not.
7. The deadline, and who approves. One person who sends consolidated feedback. Scattered notes from several colleagues in separate messages can contradict each other and slow every round.

Technical details to settle first

Every platform has its own sizes, and they change, so check the current specification before each campaign. At the time of writing, Meta's ads guide recommends a 4:5 image of 1440 by 1800 pixels for the Facebook Feed. For Instagram Stories it recommends a 9:16 image and suggests keeping roughly 14% at the top, 35% at the bottom and 6% on each side free of text and logos, so the profile icon and the call-to-action button do not cover them. Google's responsive display ads take separate images, headlines, logos and descriptions and adjust them automatically to fit the available ad space, so every asset has to work on its own.

Two more checks. Text on a web banner or a website must be readable: the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines set a minimum contrast of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. And for print, ask the print shop for its own requirements, such as bleed, color profile and file format, before the design starts rather than after.

What to expect from the process

Agree on the sequence up front, for example: the brief, the designer's questions, one or two directions, a chosen direction, adaptation to every size, final files. Agree as well on the number of revision rounds, and on what counts as a revision: a change to the brief is a new task, not a round.

Good feedback describes the problem, not the solution. "The price is hard to find" helps the designer; "make it red and bigger" may solve the wrong problem. Comment on the version in front of you, collect everyone's notes in one message, and refer back to the goal in the brief.

Who owns the files

Settle this in writing before work begins. WIPO's guide to copyright for businesses notes that in most countries the creator owns the copyright in a commissioned work, and the client receives a license to use it for the purposes it was commissioned for. Its example: under most national laws an advertising agency owns the copyright in an advertisement it made for you, unless it was expressly agreed otherwise in the contract, so reusing parts of it on your website later needs the agency's permission. Agree on which files you receive (the editable source files as well as the exports), which rights pass to you, and the rights to any photographs, fonts and illustrations used, which may carry licenses of their own.

When a template beats a new design

If the team publishes the same kinds of materials every week, a new design each time is slow and drifts from the brand. Templates for the five to ten most frequent formats, with clear rules for photographs and text, let the team produce routine pieces quickly and leave the designer the work that needs a designer. We describe this approach in putting your brand system into daily use.

When it is too early to order design

• When the text and the offer are not decided. Design packages a message; it cannot choose one for you.
• When there is no logo file and no basic brand rules. Start with the identity, or at least a short set of rules, so that every piece does not reinvent the brand.
• When the deadline is tomorrow and the brief is a phone call. Rushed work without a brief can lose more days in revisions than it saves.

Where to start

Take the last ten visuals your business published and line them up. Would a stranger see one brand? If not, write the rules before the next brief. For an outside look at your materials, request a free audit. How we run design production on a brand system is on the graphic design service page.