Writing a detailed and accurate creative brief can greatly speed up the creative process. It eliminates any time spent on guesswork and allows us, the designers, to understand the clients objectives as well as allowing the client to understand the design aspects better. To find out what makes a fantastic creative brief, we’ve listed some pointers below. 

1. Tell us about yourself

First of all we want to learn all about your company so that we can understand your background and your goals for the future. What are your USP’s (unique selling points) that make you stand out from the crowd? Tell us about your vision, set of values or mission statement. If you have Brand Guidelines then please share them with us so that we can have a read through and make sure that we adhere to them.

2. What is the message you want to deliver?

What would you like to achieve with this project?  Are you trying to deliver a completely new message to your audience or reinforce what you already stand for? Once we are clear about what your message is we can then translate this into every aspect of the design.

3. Who is your target audience?

Now that we’ve found out all about you, we want to know who your target audience are. This is so we can tailor the design towards their specific needs. Are they young or old? Male or female? Fun or serious? Corporate or non-corporate?

4. Competitor Analysis

Who are your biggest competitors in the marketplace at the moment? It’s always worthwhile doing some research into similar brands to find out how they are portraying themselves and to allow us to see what we are up against. Feel free to include if there is anything you admire about your competitor’s approach or alternatively what you would like to steer clear of. We want to create a fresh design for you that is powerful, original and stands out from the crowd.

5. Who will we be working with on the project?

Knowing each of the different people we will come into contact with during the project can be extremely helpful for us. Is there a marketing team we will be working with, or will it just be one single person who will be dealing with the project? If it is multiple people we are dealing with, then knowing who to approach during different stages of the project will save everybody a lot of time and cut out any back and forth. For example who is responsible for supplying the content? And who is responsible for signing off the project?

6. Anything you have seen that you like?

If you have ideas in your head of how you envisage the design looking then we would love you to share them with us. Don’t worry, we don’t expect you to know how the final design is going to look (after all, that’s what we’re here for!) but if there’s certain styles that you like, colours you want incorporated or fonts that you prefer, then please feel free to share them with us either via images, sketches or links to websites etc. You can use Pinterest to create a mood board of things that inspire you and then you can share this board with us, so we can see exactly what you are thinking. Perhaps you have designs you have done in the past and you would like them to follow a similar format. This isn’t a problem, as we can replicate and enhance the design so it falls in line with the same style that has been done previously.

7. Project specifics

There may be things from the get-go that you are clear need to be included. For example if we are designing a brochure for you, you may know the size and orientation it needs to be. There may be certain logos, elements or information that you want included in specific places. Drawing a flat plan can often help in these instances – so you can allocate exactly where you want certain details to be.

8. Content

This is  obviously a vital part of the project. Captivating copy and stand out imagery is really going to attract potential customers. Let us know if there is anything we can help with –  we can supply copywriters and we have our own sub-division, Thyme, which specialises in commercial photography for the food and drinks industry. We also have access to stock imagery that we can use throughout the design.

9. Key deadlines

Every project has a timescale that we need to adhere to. However you may have other deadlines along the way, such as board presentations or meetings. If you let us know any dates in advance then we can manage our time accordingly to make sure that we hit every target that is asked from us.

10. Budget

It’s worth making sure that the budget is clearly detailed from the beginning so that you know exactly what you’ll be getting for your money and whether your ideas are feasible.

As you can see, a detailed brief can make the design stage faster, better, and a lot more effective. We hope this blog has helped you to understand the process a little bit better.