Brand brief template

The difference between a brand brief and a design brief, the trap of adjectives, and brand as a set of constraints.

Pick a brief to startAbout 90 seconds. No account.

A brand brief and a design brief are often confused, and the confusion costs money in both directions. A brand brief describes who a company is, who it is for, and how it wants to be understood. A design brief describes one piece of work. A studio handed a brand brief when it needed a design brief will spend the first week asking what it is actually being asked to make. A studio handed a design brief when it needed a brand brief will make the piece well and discover afterwards that it does not fit anything else.

What a brand brief has to say

Who the company is, in plain words, without the mission statement. Who it is for, as one concrete person rather than a segment. What it does that the alternatives do not. How it wants to be understood, stated as a position between named opposites rather than as a list of virtues: considered or energetic, understated or bold, traditional or modern. And what already exists: a name, a mark, colours, a typeface, a tone of voice, any of which the new work has to respect or is allowed to replace.

The trap of adjectives

Every brand brief contains the words "premium", "authentic" and "human". They mean nothing because every brand claims them. The useful part of a brand brief is the choice between things that cannot both be true. A brand cannot be both the cheapest and the most considered. A brief that makes those choices gives designers something to work with; a brief that lists virtues gives them a mood board.

Brand as constraint

For a designer, the brand is a set of constraints on any individual piece of work: the colours that are fixed, the typeface that is licensed, the logo that has clear space, the tone that a headline has to hit. The most useful thing a brand brief can do for a piece of design work is state those constraints as facts, and the most useful thing a design brief can do is say which of them apply.

Where this site fits

HereBriefly's three briefs are design briefs: a motion brief, a website brief, and a print and packaging brief. Each asks for the brand material that exists and treats it as a constraint, each asks for one audience in one line, and each derives the tone from references rather than adjectives. They do not write the brand brief for you, on purpose; that document needs the company to have decided things a form cannot decide for it. If the brand exists and a piece of work needs briefing against it, start below. If the brand does not exist yet, the notes above are the questions to answer first.

The questions in the print and packaging brief, and what goes wrong without them

  1. Scope
    What are you making?
    Packaging, editorial and signage share almost nothing. Naming which removes most of the tree.
  2. Scope
    What kind of packaging?only when it applies
    The container decides whether a dieline is needed, whether the artwork wraps, and whether a structural supplier must be involved before design starts. A missing dieline is the most common packaging delay there is.
  3. Scope
    Format and extentonly when it applies
    Page count decides the binding, and a count not divisible by four is a hard print constraint briefers routinely break.
  4. Craft
    How many are being made?
    Quantity decides the print method, and the print method decides whether spot colours and finishes make economic sense. The briefer almost never knows this and the printer always assumes it.
  5. Craft
    Finishes and colour
    Each finish is a separate vector file and an extra proof. Foil and emboss carry tooling costs that make short runs disproportionately expensive.
  6. Craft
    Regulatory content, and who prints itonly when it applies
    Missing regulatory content is the second most common cause of packaging reprints, after dielines. A named printer turns bleed, type sizes and colour profile from assumptions into facts.
  7. Craft
    Who is printing it?only when it applies
    A named printer turns bleed, minimum type size and colour profile from assumptions into facts.
  8. Look
    Pick what you like
    People are unreliable at describing taste and reliable at recognising it. Five picks say more than a paragraph of adjectives.
  9. Look
    Your picks pull two ways. Which is closer?only when it applies
    When the references contradict each other, the designer has to pick a side. Better that you do.
  10. Look
    What already exists?
    Raster logos cannot be printed at packaging quality, and this is discovered painfully late almost every time.
  11. Look
    Who is this for, and where will they see it?
    Where it is seen changes the design more than who buys it. Online product photography is almost never mentioned and changes everything.
  12. Practicalities
    Budget range
    A band is a signal about which kind of job is on the table, not a commitment. Without one the designer guesses.
  13. Practicalities
    Key date
    A date only means something next to the minimum production window. If they do not fit, better to know now.
  14. Practicalities
    Who signs it off?
    The number of approvers, with a named tiebreak, predicts revision rounds better than anything else in the brief.
  15. Practicalities
    The one thing that must not be got wrong
    Every project has one. It is rarely written down because it feels obvious to the person who knows it.
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