Logos Templates

Graphic Design brief templates?

In most cases, a client should have a brief developed, but the problem today is that many clients believe that they know what they want and what they want is right and all they have to do is hire someone to execute it when in fact a designer does much more than that. I think that you will save your client time and money and (at the same time) display your professionalism by having a brief prepared in the event that your future clients do not.

If you have a local book store near you, you may want to look into “Creating the Perfect Design Brief: How to Manage Design for Strategic Advantage” by Peter L. Phillips, published in 2004 just in case you have any further questions.

Before any business goes down you should want to know the budget of your client (AVAILABLE BUDGET) and when they expect this project to be done (DEADLINE). With the deadline, the client should take into consideration the time spent on research and strategy, concept and design, production (printing and other forms of production) and delivery.

The rest of the brief should pretty much support the design you will be doing:

OBJECTIVES — what does the client want to achieve? Whether it be more business or something more up to date or asthetically pleasing, their expectations should be realistic.

TARGET MARKET — age, gender, geography, lifestyle of those the client wants to reach. Some clients may not know this while others may not think they know this.

I was doing a flyer once and the client asked me to include an image of a well groomed young male in a tux and a pretty lady in a dress. I ended up using an Asian couple, yet the client came back and said that the party was going to be populated with a majority of Blacks. This could have saved some embarrassment and time if this was mentioned earlier before the design went under way.

“THE MESSAGE” — this is one thing the client should be able to provide you with. What do they want to get across? Also what do they want used in the design and what are they providing you with: product shots, photographs, diagrams, text/wording?

CORPORATE PROFILE — so they could say that “We are a realty agency,” but the client shouldn’t assume that you know everything about them nor will you. It never hurts for them to provide a small summary of their business along with a brief history.

WHAT TO DO AND WHAT NOT TO DO — This part is most clients favorite since a lot of clients love to play the role of artist. It is best to get this understood in the beginning though. I have had a case where a project seemed to be going well. The lady didn’t have much of a budget, but I thought that I would help her out. I constantly kept her up to date with the work I was doing and the project was progressing. All of a sudden, contact between us lessened. I sent her a follow-up e-mail and she suddenly started to say that she wanted to atake alter the project a bit and she now wasn’t too pleased with some of the photos used and she wanted to do a photo shoot all over again when I was thinking the project was near completion.

Another thing that a lot of clients misunderstand is what design works and copyrite laws. If a client shows you something and says “We love this, but just want to erase X and replace it with Y and maybe do away with A and add some B instead,” listen to them but at the same time offer your views and guide them from what they think might be good for them to something that is extremely better and will definitely give them their money’s worth.

There are maybe many more things you can include, but you cannot go wrong with the basics that I touched on. Depending on the brief and the client, you may get more descriptive and helpful feedback from one person as opposed to another.

Your idea to design the brief is good. I will leave the decision up to you as to whether you would like to design the brief for Adobe Acrobat or Microsoft Word or some other file format in which the client can easily type in the information. For the less computer savvy and those with a printer though, they should also have the option to print the brief, fill it out and fax or scan it to you.

Good luck!

3D Logo Template: Abstractagon