How do you write a brand brief?
Answer a handful of questions clearly and honestly: what you do, who for, why you, how you want to feel to customers, and what you need. Then cut anything that doesn't help a designer make a decision.
A good brief is short. Its job is to get everyone agreeing on the problem before any design starts, so the first round of work is close, not a guess. Most branding projects that go wrong do so because the brief was vague, not because the designer was weak.
What is a brand brief for?
It turns what's in your head into something a designer can act on. It also gives you a fair way to judge the work: does this design do what the brief asked?
That second job matters more than people expect. Without a brief, feedback turns into personal taste, and projects drift through round after round of changes.
What goes in a brand brief?
These eight sections cover almost every project, from a new logo to a full rebrand.
- The business: what you do, in one or two sentences a stranger would understand.
- The goal: why you need branding now. A launch, a rebrand, a new market, a website.
- The audience: who buys, what they care about and what worries them.
- Positioning: why people choose you over the alternatives, in one line.
- Competitors: three to five, with what you like and dislike about how they look.
- Personality: three to five words for how the brand should feel, and a few it shouldn't.
- Deliverables: logo, colours, type, tone of voice, guidelines, templates, and where they'll be used.
- Practicalities: deadline, budget approach, who gives feedback and who signs off.
What's the step-by-step method?
This is the order we'd write a brief in. It takes an afternoon, not a week.
- Write what the business does in one sentence, then cut it down until it's clear.
- Describe your best customers: who they are, what they need and why they chose you.
- Write your positioning in one line: for whom, what you do and why you're the better choice.
- List three to five competitors and note how you want to look different from each.
- Pick three to five personality words, and three you'd hate to be called.
- Gather examples you like, from any sector, and say what you like about each one.
- List every place the brand will appear: website, ads, social, signage, vans, packaging.
- Set the deliverables, the deadline and the names of everyone who'll give feedback.
- Read it back as if you were the designer, and cut anything that doesn't help a decision.
How do you describe your audience and competitors?
Be specific. 'Small businesses' doesn't help a designer. 'Owners of trade businesses in the East Midlands, who want to look as established as the big firms' does.
For competitors, show rather than tell. Add screenshots of their websites or logos and say what you'd keep or avoid. That tells the designer where the space is, which is usually the most useful thing in the whole brief.
How do you brief the look without designing it yourself?
Describe the feel and the job, not the answer. 'Confident, warm, easy to read on a phone' gives a designer room to work. 'A blue circle with our initials' doesn't.
Examples help, as long as you say why you've picked them. If there are things that must stay, such as a colour customers know you by, say so clearly. Everything else should be open.
What mistakes make a brand brief useless?
We see the same few in most briefs.
- Describing the logo you want instead of the problem it has to solve.
- An audience of 'everyone'.
- No competitors, so the designer can't see the gap.
- Personality words that every business uses, such as professional and friendly.
- No list of where the brand will be used.
- Too many people giving feedback, with nobody signing off.