Written by
Ingrid Solberg
A good brief is one page long and mostly questions. This is the one we wish every client sent, and you are welcome to copy it.
The best briefs we receive are a single page. The worst are forty slides. Length is not the difference; the short ones are written by someone who has decided what they want to find out.
Five questions
What do you make, in one sentence a stranger would understand? Who buys it today, and who do you wish did? What is the one thing a visitor should do next? What have you tried that did not work? When does this need to exist, and what happens if it is late?
What to leave out
Mood boards, competitor logos and adjectives. Clean, modern, bold and premium describe every brief ever written, so they tell a studio nothing. A photograph of your shop on a busy Saturday is worth more than all four.
A note on budget
Say the number. A studio can design a good answer to almost any budget, but only if it knows what the budget is. Hiding it does not get you a better price; it gets you a proposal for the wrong project.