It arrives as a paragraph in an email. "We need a new site, something modern, launch in October, budget to be discussed." You have been here before, and you know that the next two weeks are the brief being written by other means: three calls, a proposal that guesses, and a first presentation that is really a scoping session with a price attached.
A bad brief is not a bad client. It is a client who was never shown what a good one looks like, and who is a little embarrassed about that. Your job in the next hour is to turn the paragraph into something you can quote from, without making them feel caught out. Here is how, from the receiving end.
Thank them, and name what is already there
Every bad brief contains two or three real decisions, buried. The date. The kind of thing. Sometimes a reference, sometimes a budget hint. Find them, repeat them back, and treat them as the start of the brief rather than the whole of it. A client who hears "the October date and the fact it is a marketing site tell me a lot" relaxes, and a relaxed client answers the next five questions honestly.
“Thanks for this. We will need quite a bit more information before we can quote.”
“Thanks, this is a good start. October and a marketing site tell me a lot. To quote properly I need five more things, and I have listed them below so you can answer in one go.”
Ask the five things that size the job
Not twenty questions. Five. For a site: how many kinds of page, who builds it, who edits it afterwards, whether the copy exists, and the one thing a visitor should do. For a film: where it plays, how it is made, how many languages, what exists, and who signs off. For print: the piece, the quantity, the shelf or delivery date, what must be on it, and whether a dieline exists. Ask them as a numbered list in one email, so the client can answer in one reply, and say which ones you can live without for now.
“Could you tell us more about the scope, the audience, the objectives, the timeline, the budget, the stakeholders, the technical requirements and any brand guidelines?”
“Five things and I can quote: 1. Which kinds of page, roughly how many of each. 2. Are we building it, or handing files to a developer? 3. Who updates it after launch? 4. Does the copy exist? 5. What should a visitor do on the site? If you only know three, send three.”
Turn adjectives into two references
"Modern" and "premium" are not information, but arguing about that gets you nowhere. Instead, send two pieces of work that sit at different ends of the scale the adjective is hiding, and ask which one they reach for. Clients are unreliable at describing taste and reliable at recognising it. The answer to "this one or that one?" is worth a page of adjectives, and it takes them thirty seconds.
“When you say modern, could you elaborate on what you mean by that?”
“Two sites, both modern in different ways: this one is sparse and quiet, this one is dense and energetic. Which is closer to you? If neither, send one that is.”
Write the brief back to them
This is the step most studios skip, and it is the one that changes everything. Once you have the answers, write a one-page brief in plain lines and send it back: "Here is what I understand. Tell me what is wrong." You are not doing their work for them. You are giving both of you a page to point at, and you are showing them, without a lecture, what a brief looks like. The next one they send you will look like it.
“Great, I think we have enough to put a proposal together.”
“Before the proposal, here is the brief as I understand it, one page. Two things are still open and I have marked them. Tell me what I have wrong and I will quote against the corrected version.”
Give them the link for next time
If the client is one you want to keep, end the conversation by making the next brief easier than this one was. Send your intake link with one sentence: "Next time, this takes ninety seconds and skips the email round." You have shown them what a good brief contains; the link is how they produce one without you writing it back to them.
“Looking forward to working together on this and future projects.”
“For the next project, use this link: herebriefly.com/i/north-studio. It asks the five things above by tapping and sends me a document with the gaps marked, so we skip the email round.”
When you do not know
Sometimes the paragraph is so thin that you cannot tell what kind of job it is, and the five questions would be the wrong five. Then the honest reply is a twenty-minute call, framed as a favour to them: "Fifteen minutes on the phone will save us both a week of email." Ask the sizing questions out loud, write the one-page brief afterwards, and send it back. What does not work is quoting against a paragraph and hoping the number holds.
A brief that arrives through your intake link is already the one-page version, with the five things asked and the gaps marked. The bad-brief conversation still happens sometimes. It happens less, and it starts from a document.
