From my last post, you now know what a brief is and how it can help you. Now we are going to dive into the exploration of the specifics of what a brief is made up of. It needs to be short enough to keep the readers interest while at the same time have enough depth to explain the current position.

The following 8 parts are the most essential sections to include in your brief, but if there is something you feel needs to be added in then go for it. We are going to go into the first 4 in this post, and the remaining 4 in the next.

1. A Company Overview

2. Project Objective

3. Demographic/Target Audience

4. Problems or Challenges

5. Competitors

6. Project Specifics - Key Message

7. Technicals - Timescale/Budget/Selection Process

8. Contact Info

Company Overview

First things first, you need to let the prospective agencies know about your business. It needs to be concise, outline of what your company does, what products or services you offer and ideally, your USP. For example:

At Harrison Jones Design, we help facilitate all branding and design needs to help brands not only grow but connect more genuinely with their customers. We work with other creative minds that specialise in things such as SEO, web design and social media marketing that can assist in a complete branding package from start up visual identity to a well established website refresh. Its our transparent and collaborative nature that makes us unique.

Great, we have a short insight into the company and what they do.

Project Objective

What is the reason for the project? This section should explain the driving factor behind the decision to reach out. This could be that your business has shifted in its main service offerings, it could be that the website had been created to look like myspace or it could be that your brand identity is feeling old. This is the point to be clear about what you would like to achieve from this project. What would make this project successful in the eyes of your company? Clarity is key here. For example:

Our website is not brining in enough of the right clients. We ideally would like to know why, adjust accordingly in order to direct the right sort of clients to our website. We would like to double the amount of new clients we gain from enquiries.

Demographic/Target Audience

If you’ve ever created a persona for your company, this is where it would be handy to attach to the brief. If not, don’t fret, a persona is just an example of your ideal customer/client. As designers, its our job to try to see things from the customers point of view. In turn, this can be really beneficial in problem finding and solving for your company.

No doubt I will do a post on how to create client personas, but for now, here are some things to think about. What kind of education do they have? What kind of job do they have? What apps to they often use? What kind of things do they read? What are their hobbies? Life goals? Challenges they face?

Problems or Challenges

Speaking of facing challenges, it’s vital you make it clear what problem your company is currently facing. If the goals you have set out are the finish line, the problems and challenges are the hurdles and obstacles likely to get in the way. This might be a difficult task in the sense that you are going to need to be completely honest about what the core issues are. It could be, as in the earlier example, that the enquires coming through are often not of the desired client base (projects too small or not in need of our services) so we need to figure out the why. Is the website copy appropriate for the target audience? Is there something inherently wrong with the web design? Is enough traffic coming to the website in general?

Phew, that will do for now. We will cover the second half of the list in the next post. This should keep you busy for now.