Putting together a design brief

A design brief is one of the most essential parts of the design process. A design brief points your graphic designer in the direction that you want your project to go. Starting a project without a design brief would be a bit like building a house without a blueprint. 

It’s important to spend time on your design brief really thinking about how you see your brand, where you see yourself positioned and ensuring that the direction that you are pointing your designer in is where you want to go. Your designer needs direction, telling a designer “you’re the expert, we’ll leave it to you” is a bit like saying to a chef “you’re the chef, cook me anything”, only to realise that you forgot to tell them that you don’t like chicken and that you’re allergic to vegetables.

We believe simplicity is clarity when it comes to putting together a design brief so we ask our clients to complete two short tasks prior to commencing a branding project. It’s important that you spend the time on these components to achieve the result you are looking for.

Branding Questionnaire

My branding questionnaire runs through everything from your target market, to the nitty gritty details of what you want to include in your logo design and overall branding. We’ve thrown a few questions into our brand questionnaire to really get you thinking about your brand.

Mood Board

This is a mix of both specific and atmospheric images. We want to get an overall feel of the brand you are envisioning, as well as the types of logos that you are drawn towards. Your mood board helps us to understand the visual direction for your brand. Our preferred ways to receive your moodpboard are via Pinterest, but we’re also happy for you to bombard us with a tonne of images via email and we’ll put together a mood board for you. These visuals don’t need to be related to your industry, but rather show us the look and feel of the brand you are envisioning. As you can see below, this mood board has a mix of food, beauty products and candles but all with a distinct look and feel.

Final Content

Providing a designer with your final content, whether it’s business details or website copy, saves you both a lot of back and forward. When putting together your design brief, make sure that you have your business contact details ready to go. Similarly, if you are briefing in your designer on packaging or website design, make sure that you have all of your final copy and required elements ready to go.