What to Include in a Design Brief

Designers are not mind readers, but a surprising amount of design buying proceeds as though they are. The brief arrives as a sentence — “we need a logo, something modern” — and then everyone is surprised when the first draft is wrong, and wrong again, and the project quietly sours over a fortnight of one-line notes.

What is actually happening is that the designer has been handed a set of blanks and has filled them in with reasonable assumptions. Their assumptions, not yours. Every blank you leave is a decision you have delegated without meaning to, and every wrong assumption costs a revision round — which is your time as much as theirs.

A good brief is not long. Most of the ones that work are under a page. It is specific in the places that matter and deliberately open in the places where you want expertise applied. This guide covers the nine things it should contain, in the order a designer will look for them.

Why the brief decides the design

Design is a series of choices made under constraints. Colour, type, layout, weight, tone, complexity. A designer can only choose well if they know which constraints are real, and the brief is the only place they find out.

Consider a logo. Whether it will mostly be seen at thumbnail size on a phone or embossed on packaging changes the answer completely. Whether it needs to work in one colour, whether it sits next to a parent brand, whether the business will expand beyond its current name — all of these are constraints that quietly determine the design, and none of them are visible in “something modern”.

There is a second effect worth knowing about. A specific brief attracts better proposals. When designers see a brief that shows the buyer has thought about the problem, they can price it accurately and are more inclined to bid. A vague brief attracts either a padded quote to cover the unknown or a template response from someone not paying attention.

The general framework for briefing any freelance work is in our guide on writing a project brief that gets great proposals. This page is the design-specific version of that.

Start with the business, not the design

Open with three or four sentences that have nothing to do with design at all: what the business does, who it sells to, what makes it different, and where it is going. Designers use this constantly, usually without saying so — a premium consultancy and a discount retailer describing the same deliverable want visibly different work.

Then answer the question behind the request: why now? A rebrand because you have outgrown a logo made in a hurry is a different job from a rebrand because you are entering a new market, and different again from one because a new investor dislikes the current one. The reason shapes how far the designer should move from what exists.

Be honest about the awkward parts too. A stakeholder with strong opinions, a colour you cannot change because of a parent brand, a previous attempt that failed and why. Designers are not put off by constraints. They are put off by discovering them at draft three.

Spell out exactly what you need delivered

This is where most briefs are thinnest and where the money actually is. “A logo” can mean one lockup in one format, or a full identity with variants, a mark, a favicon, social avatars and a usage guide. Those are wildly different amounts of work.

List every item you expect to receive. If you are not sure what you need, say what you will use it for and let the designer propose the list — that is a legitimate and useful question to ask, and their answer tells you how experienced they are.

• Logo projectPrimary lockup, secondary or stacked version, icon or monogram, one-colour and reversed versions, favicon, social avatar, file formats, and whether a usage guide is included.
• Website designWhich page templates, mobile as well as desktop, whether a component library is included, and whether the designer builds it or hands files to a developer.
• Social graphicsHow many designs, which platforms and sizes, whether editable templates are included, and who supplies the copy and photography.
• Print workFinished dimensions, bleed and margins, colour mode, whether the designer liaises with the printer, and who signs off the proof.
• Presentation designNumber of slides, which software, whether a reusable template is included, and whether the designer writes or only lays out the content.

Say explicitly how many initial concepts you expect. One well-argued direction and three loose options are different pieces of work, and the number is a common source of mismatched expectations. Neither is better — but you should both know which you agreed.

Who it is for and what it must do

Design that is not aimed at anyone tends to be judged on personal taste, which is the worst possible basis for a decision. Give the designer a target and the conversation shifts from “do I like it” to “does it work”.

Describe the audience in concrete terms: who they are, what they already think of businesses like yours, and what would make them hesitate. Then state the job the design has to do. Get someone to click. Make a nervous buyer feel safe. Stand out on a shelf next to four competitors. Be legible on a van at thirty metres. Survive being printed in one colour on a receipt.

Those functional requirements are gold, because they are testable. “It must be legible as a 32-pixel favicon” is something a designer can check and you can verify. “It should feel premium” is something you will argue about.

Brand, tone and the assets you already have

Send everything that already exists, even if you are not fond of it. Existing logo files, brand guidelines however informal, fonts you have licensed, your colour codes, photography, icon sets. If a designer has to recreate your assets because you sent a screenshot, you are paying for work you already own.

Two details that cause disproportionate trouble. Send vector logo files where you have them — a raster image pulled off your own website cannot be scaled or recoloured cleanly, and a designer working from one is working with their hands tied. And be clear about font licensing: naming a font you have not licensed for the use in question creates a problem later, and it is far cheaper to resolve now.

Then describe the tone in a few words, and where possible in contrasts. “Confident but not corporate. Warm, not cute. Modern, but it should still look right in five years.” Contrasts communicate far more than adjectives alone, because they show the designer where the boundaries are.

References: what you like, and what you do not

References are the single most efficient part of a design brief. Three to five links or images, each with one line explaining what you are pointing at, replace several paragraphs of description and remove most of the ambiguity in the whole document.

The rule is to be specific about what you like. “This one, because of the typography — not the colour” is useful. Sending a reference with no comment invites the designer to guess which quality caught your eye, and they will sometimes guess the one you were indifferent to.

Include negative references. Two or three examples of work you dislike, with a reason, are as valuable as the positive ones and often more so. They mark out the territory to avoid before anyone spends a day there.

One caution: references are direction, not a target. Asking a designer to reproduce a competitor’s identity is both a poor outcome for your business and a potential legal problem. Point at qualities you want, not at work you want copied.

Formats, sizes and technical constraints

The dull section, and the one that prevents the most rework. Everything here is cheap to specify in advance and expensive to fix afterwards.

• File formats. Vector formats for anything that will be scaled; the specific raster formats and resolutions for everything else. If you do not know, say where each item will be used and ask the designer to specify.
• Dimensions and aspect ratios. Every size you need, listed. Adapting a design to a new ratio is real work, not an export setting.
• Colour mode. Screen and print use different colour models, and a design that looks right on a monitor can print differently. Say which is the primary use.
• Where it will be built. WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, a specific email platform, a slide deck. Each has genuine constraints a designer needs to design within.
• Accessibility requirements. Colour contrast, minimum text sizes, alternative text. If you have a standard to meet, name it in the brief rather than at review.
• Anything mandatory. Legal wording, regulatory marks, a parent brand’s rules, a partner logo that must appear at a set size.

Budget, timeline and revision rounds

Give a budget or a range. Withholding it in the hope of a lower quote is a false economy: designers price against scope, and without a number they either quote high to cover the unknown or quote low for a smaller job than you had in mind. A range lets a good designer tell you honestly what is achievable within it, and propose a phased approach if it is not enough.

Give a real deadline and say what it is attached to. A trade show, a launch, a print run. And — the part buyers forget — state your own turnaround for feedback. Most design projects that run late run late on the client side. If sign-off needs three people and one of them is away next week, that belongs in the brief.

Agree the number of revision rounds before the work starts, and define what a round is. Two rounds, with all feedback consolidated into one list each time, is a fair and common arrangement. What corrodes a fixed price is the slow drip: a single note on Monday, another on Tuesday, a fresh opinion from a colleague on Thursday. Collect the views, resolve the contradictions internally, then send one list.

Market prices for design vary enormously by scope, complexity and experience, so treat any figure you read as a starting point rather than a rate. Our guides on what a logo design costs and what a website costs go through the bands in detail.

Ownership, source files and usage rights

This is general guidance and not legal advice. Copyright and licensing rules differ between countries, so take local professional advice where the answer matters commercially.

The principle that surprises buyers most is this: in many jurisdictions the person who creates a design is the first owner of the copyright in it, and paying for the work does not by itself transfer that ownership. You may be receiving a licence to use the design rather than the rights to it. The details vary considerably, which is exactly why it belongs in the brief rather than in an assumption.

Three things to state explicitly:

• What rights you need. Full ownership, or a licence for defined uses. A logo or a brand system almost always needs to be owned outright; a single illustration for one campaign may not.
• Whether source files are included. Finished exports and editable working files are different deliverables. If you want the layered file so another designer can adapt it later, list it as a deliverable now — it is much harder to obtain a year afterwards.
• Whether the designer may show the work. Most want it for their portfolio, which is reasonable. If your project is confidential or under embargo, say so at the start.

Put whatever you agree in writing. A short written agreement covering scope, deliverables, revisions, payment and ownership prevents nearly every dispute that arises in design work, and it takes minutes.

A design brief template you can copy

Copy this, fill it in, and send it. It is deliberately short — a designer will read all of it, which is not true of three pages.

• The businessWhat we do, who we sell to, what makes us different, and why we need this now.
• What we needEvery deliverable, listed, with the number of initial concepts expected.
• Audience and jobWho will see it, and the specific thing it must achieve or survive.
• Brand and assetsTone in a few words; links to logo files, fonts, colours and photography attached.
• ReferencesThree we like and two we do not, each with one line saying why.
• TechnicalFormats, sizes, colour mode, platform, accessibility requirements, mandatory elements.
• Budget and datesOur range, the deadline and what it is tied to, and how quickly we will give feedback.
• RevisionsHow many rounds are included and what counts as one.
• OwnershipWhat rights we need, whether source files are included, and whether the work may be shown publicly.

Five briefing mistakes to avoid

• Describing the solution instead of the problem. “Make the logo blue and bigger” buys you a blue logo. “It disappears on our packaging” buys you a designer solving it properly.
• Hiding the budget. It produces padded quotes and mismatched scope, not bargains.
• Sending contradictory feedback from several people. Resolve it internally and send one voice.
• Leaving deliverables implied. If it is not on the list, assume it is not in the price.
• Skipping the negative references. Knowing what you hate saves more time than knowing what you like.

Briefing a designer on Zinn Hub

Buyers pay no platform fee on Zinn Hub — the price you see is the price you pay, and nothing is added at checkout. All prices are in USD; you can view an approximate equivalent in your own currency across 59 display currencies, but USD is always what you are charged.

Where your brief goes depends on how defined it is. If it is precise, order a fixed-price service outright from the graphic design marketplace, the logo design marketplace or the UX and UI design marketplace, or browse the graphics and design category directly. If it is still taking shape, post a project free and let designers propose against it — the questions they ask will improve your brief on their own.

You can also approach people directly: browse design freelancers, narrow by a specific skill such as Figma or brand identity, or work from the service side through tags like graphic design.

If you would rather test a designer before handing over the full brief, a Micro Zinn is a fixed-price service at $5, $10, $15 or $20 — browse them by logo design, by social media graphics, or at the $5 tier. Send a small real task with a proper brief and you learn how they interpret one, which is the thing you actually need to know.

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On the seller side the fee structure is published in full on our pricing page: 0% commission on your first $500, then tiered rates that fall as you sell — as low as 7% on Agency Zinner. None of that is charged to you; it is deducted on the Zinner’s side of the order. If you are the designer rather than the buyer, our page on selling graphic design services online covers the other side of this guide.