Write great design briefs.

Designers love to be creative. It is rare to come across a designer who does not openly profess to loving their work. However, no matter how much a designer may long to be wildly creative, giving a designer too much leeway or two little instruction is a recipe for frustration and friction on your design projects.

For example, your design team learns nothing if a project is started with a note reading something like, “Need website redesign. Make it cool!” Not only are you likely giving your designer a reason to grumble and complain, you are also setting yourself up to get a finished product that you don’t want. And that is a waste of everyone’s time and money.

In order to make the design process run quickly and smoothly, it is important to understand the workings of a good design brief. Design briefs are critical to defining the direction of a new project. Both the client and the design firm need to agree to a design brief, or at least a list of basic questions, before any project is started. While design briefs need to be flexible – the same brief doesn’t work for every project – there are a certain set of questions that both designer and client need to agree on. The greater the understanding between designer and client from the beginning, the more value the finished project will have.

We’ve put together a list here of some things we think are important. We hope you will find it useful for your future design endeavors.

Questions to ask yourself:

1. Who is your audience? What actions do you want your audience to take?
2. What are others in your industry doing? How can you stand out  and do things differently?
3. What is your unique offering? What is the most important thing you want your audience to know about you and how will they benefit from it?
4. What is the emotional reaction you want to evoke in your audience? How do you want them to feel about your company?
5. What is the budget? Are there concrete deadlines?

Things to consider:

1. Have specific goals for your message. Beautiful work is not effective if it does not hit its target. You goal may be recruiting, educating, promoting or a variety of other things. Know what results you want and what call to action you are giving your customers.
2. Have specific goals for your overall business. Make sure the specific project you are working on promotes overall business objectives as well as specific project focus.
3. Stay on message. Don’t get distracted by personal design preferences, and by all means do not try to copy what other people have done. It may not be relevant to the goals you are trying to achieve.

Whatever your project, stay thoughtful and open, and make sure you lay the groundwork for a solid professional relationship from the beginning. Your project will progress more smoothly and you will be more likely to get the results you want the first time.