Are you integrating your new website with a CRM system? A design brief is a document, completed by an individual or organisation looking to reach out for creative services. A design brief is a top level overview of the project at hand, that can be used to help external branding and design agencies to understand more about your business and your plans. It also means they don’t stray too close to what your competitors are doing when creating your new brand identity or website design. You can do this by asking insightful questions about your existing customers. Can you partner with them to offer a new service? So, how do you write a design brief? It’s a great initial document to have, but it should grow with your project. But just giving some indication of what you’re working with goes a long way! Before we dive in, it’s important to note that depending on your specific project, your design brief might alter slightly. Even if you’re just scoping out agencies to work with, having a well written design brief will make obtaining a quote for your design work easier than ever. That’s a problem that needs unpicked a little. At DesignCrowd.com we try and make working out a budget easy by creating packages around particular price points. Currently, most of our clients come through our website, thanks to our content strategy. Amongst the requests for work, there’s often a lot of rubbish, some half-decent leads, and sometimes, a real diamond in the rough. You need to make your brief easy to understand, compact enough to retain interest, but comprehensive enough to give a good overview of your situation. Do you want to be like them, or completely different. Your company doesn’t just decide to rebrand or build a website at random. Good design work comes from good partnerships. If you know there are deep rooted problems, get them noted down. Another thing to ask yourself here is, “what will make this project a success?”. But it isn’t written in stone. As a top level overview, a written design brief should include: And again, depending on whether you’re writing a branding brief, rebranding brief, or web design brief, you might add several sections to the structure of this. Free templates, ebooks, guides, and more, to help drive results through design. It’s a way of communicating with an agency, about your design needs and requirements. This ties really nicely into your project goals. In a design agency, you’re trading time for money, so being able to plan your workload is key. There are at any given time, a number of Designers working on your Projects for free (that means "no compensation unless chosen"). To increase sales, increase awareness etc. From goals and objectives through to audience personas and competitor information. Essentially, you want to outline their demographic traits and psychographic characteristics. Writing a good design brief is no easy task. Set a realistic deadline for the project that both yourself and the designer agree upon. Try to answer the following questions in your business overview: Every design project relies on all parties having a clear understanding of the business they’re working with and the sector they’re working in. And if you’ve never done it before, expect to spend a good chunk of time writing and reworking it. While Designers can be a bit more flexible than the traditional Advertising Firm, understand you are here for a reason. If you’re looking for a rapid turnaround time, and the agencies you reach out to have a lot of work on, they might decline the offer to work together. This rationale also applies in case you're a non-profit, chances are you take advantage of Grant dollars; your finances are private, but keep your Project demands in mind when you post an Award for Work-in-Kind.If you're a smaller entity, there is some leeway as well as long as you remember that there may be Overhead costs for Designers or there may not. Defining the competition helps to clarify the landscape. It’s not respectful of their time. Clearly listing out the contact details of the project contact, and the best time and way to get hold of them, will make things run a lot smoother. Enter your design brief. Helping your agency to know your competitors not only eases their workload, but allows discussions about them to take place at an earlier stage in the process. This article is designed to help you think through your requirements so designers can interpret the brief and quickly create relevant designs for your project. Solution? But when an Owner expects the world (or at least a 1000+USD protect-able Logo-element to spearhead her Brand Identity/Marketing Campaign) for 200USD, you either shake your head or wonder if this Project Owner really feels his time is worth more than your sum Designer-experience or contribution. You don’t need to list every single detail out, but having a rough idea of what you could possibly invest, is better than no idea at all. For further reading, check out imjustcreative's blog posts. Because our content appeals globally, we have clients across the world. In this situation, they’re usually quite time poor, and the brief will be less comprehensive. A website project goal could be even more basic: “Our website doesn’t sell enough products. But now, you have a chance to share even more about your business. However, there are always some things to consider. Are you a true disruptor? What does their family structure look like? The objective of your design project is one thing, but the problem you’re facing as a business is something else entirely. For now, let’s take a look at writing a design brief based on the outline above. Now, steer into it, and with a professional design agency by your side, you’ll be able to overcome it. This question often helps design agencies to decide whether they can be involved with your project or not. Take your time in filling the sections out - the more information you put into the document, the faster the end result will come. Maybe you can record yourself describing a bit about your business and the problems you’re facing. If you’re finding it difficult to make, then stop right there. Noting down the ins-and-outs might make your brief seem long and boring, but from an agency perspective, I can promise you that it’s not. Not sure how to choose an agency to work with? Are you happy with it? With the world's #1 custom design marketplace. But don’t let that dissuade you. Are you using enough trust indicators across your website? And how are they going to get excited about your project if they don’t know anything about it? More, wet sand. Is it a rebrand, or a new company? Now, come back to your piece. Your goal for a branding project, could simply be something like: “We need a new brand identity to help us stand out from the noise. Tell them how to submit their proposal, what to include, by when, and you’re off to the races. Your Brand is being created, for free until you select this-, or that- specific Work. You need to decide here, are you trying to stand out, or fit in? Therefore, differentiation matters. What are your goals? By addressing their objections, you can make educated website copy, and so on. There might be much better solutions available at a higher investment level. Switch … This happens because more often than not, it’s beneficial to have your design agency make recommendations, rather than adding restrictions from the outset. If you follow these steps, you should be able to find a great design agency to work with. The market place we operate in is crowded. Budgets are important. And then you send the brief. Solutions? Some design projects you might have in mind could include: In any of these cases, a well written design brief will help keep your project running smoothly. There needs to be a reasonable level of understanding here, things don’t just happen overnight. These are both things that will put your customers off. Invest accordingly and reap the effort that will pay off in Brand Recognition, Trademark Protect-ability, ease of use across Mediums, etc. Typically, there are several elements at play: There are any number of factors you could use to judge the responses. Remember, there are many stages to the design process. The more you can offer in the first instance here, the better. We don’t believe in distributing your brief to a huge number of agencies. Are there any key pages that drive traffic and conversions? But if you have specific requirements, it’s best to get them listed out now. Enter your design brief. First things first, exactly what should be included in your design brief? By writing a design brief, you’re getting the ideas for your project out of your head, and down on paper. You focus on the problem, and let your agency focus on fixing it for you. It’s 5 times over what you thought you’d be paying. If you are cautious for a couple hundred dollars, look around or at least read your options in the Terms and Conditions. 3 to 5 agencies is a fair number to approach. | Created by Canny, Branding projects (typically when branding a new company from scratch), Rebranding projects (when an existing company needs to change), Website projects (be it a standard website or something more complex), A rebranding project, which again has its own unique. Design agencies have a poor reputation, because unfortunately, there are a lot of unscrupulous people out there. If you’re based in North America, it’s quite common for briefs to be classed as an RFP (request for proposal) or an RFQ (request for quotation). You’ll get ideas as you go, things will change, goals will become easily reachable or be out of reach. In our free customer persona worksheet we ask you to list out the basic information about your customers, but also: Knowing this information will help inform your design project. What do you do and how do you make your money? Keep in mind that we’re a growing design agency based in the North East of England. What message do you wish to communicate about your business? You’ve lost an hour of your time, the agency has also lost a significant chunk of time by writing out the proposal. Design Brief 101. By noting them down in your design brief, these are the sorts of discussions you can with your design agency, who can then help position you for success. But there always needs to be a lead point of contact in every design project. If you're choosing to hire a freelancer directly then be direct about giving this detail to the designer as it will allow them to understand how much time they should spend on the project. One thing I always ask our new clients is: “Is there an event/product launch/something else we can work towards with the project?”. Make sure you include 2 or 3 examples! If you're looking for freelance design jobs, find out more about the benefits when you join DesignCrowd today. If you’re in London, or New York City, the investment you’re going to be making is going to a lot more. Can you share these? Company Profile. If you’re really unsure on how much certain things cost, we have some great posts about pricing that are listed out below. And, your design brief doesn’t need to be a huge document, you’re not writing “War and Peace.”. Your website isn’t converting visitors into customers. There’s always a driving factor. Discover fantastic content, written by industry professionals and thought leaders everyday on the DesignCrowd blog. It doesn’t always have to be a standard written document! Thoughts? If they know what you want done, they can figure out exactly what you need. I tend to think they're not really serious when giving an overview of their organization becomes that task that's impossible to complete for your would-be Designer. Now that you’ve learned how to write a design brief, and created your shortlist of design agencies, it’s time to start reaching out. Goals and objectives focus on where you want to be. And, that’s the fairest way of doing business. The more you can profile about your demographic, the more well rounded and informed your design brief will be. Without having a solid brief to back your project, you won't get the results as quickly and efficiently as you can with an amazing brief. A good design brief will put everyone on exactly the same page, aligning expectations, and making sure both parties understand the goals and objectives of the design project at hand. Let us know in the comments below. It’s good to know who you’re going into business with. “ASAP” is not an acceptable answer when talking about timescales either. ). In any case, the Designer's specific overhead is not the point. Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy. If you’re going to judge the success or failure of a project, it’s only fair to let the agency you work with know what the criteria are. But today, we’re talking about branding projects, and the design brief you need to write for that. Why? For now, we’ll try and keep things general. 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