How to prepare an effective design brief for graphic design projects.

A thoroughly prepared client brief is half the success of a rebranding or design project. Attaining all the necessary and relevant information from the client and a comprehensive insight into the client's brand provides you with a great foundation for the right brand identity and design solution. As a designer or brand consultant, a properly prepared client brief gives multiple sources of ideas to work with.
Unless you have a clear understanding of what the client wants and needs you waste your time trying to design something out of nothing and the client ends up spending more money than budgeted for as a result of the required modifications…which naturally makes both parties very happy….
Depending on the particular project you will need a specific design brief. That means if you are developing a website or creating a business card, the client design brief will be different. However, there is some general information about your company and what you want to achieve, which should give a good idea in any design situation. Here are some general questions that will help me and fellow designers and consultants:

1. Title
2. What is the nature of your business? What does your business do?
3. What is your target market?
a. Age
b. Sex
c. Income
d. Occupation
e. Location
4. What is unique about your business or product?
5. Who is your competition?
6. What is your aim? What are your goals?
7. How do you want your clients to feel about the brand? What is the message you want to communicate?
8. What is your budget? Range?
a. Providing a rough guide enables the consultant/designer with an idea of the type of marketing and design solution that can be provided to you.
9. What is your deadline?
10. Provide the designer with current and past design and marketing materials.

Hint #1: If there are more people working in your business GET THEM INVOLVED! Chances are they view the business or product or even the problem differently to what you do. Getting others involved in the briefing process will expose significant differences in how your company, the problem and its objectives are perceived. Also, if you are the owner there is a slight chance your 'evaluation' may be victim of bias? One suggestion is to do an anonymous internal survey, which allows your staff to freely and honestly evaluate the situation and share their opinion. This is a great way to get to the core of the problem or situation at hand.
Hint #2: Let your feelings run wild. Share how you feel about the brand or product. This will help evaluating the current image and personality and also give the consultant and designer a good base for what you would like the image of the company to be. What does your image say about you?

To see how you can improve the image of your brand click here:
Graphic Design Melbourne

Zen Creative Marketing is a Marketing, Brand Consulting & Graphic Design Firm in Melbourne offering small businesses branding and custom-designed graphic design solutions.