An effective brief gives designers everything they need to know to exceed your expectations. At 99designs, we make it easy with our online brief.
To help, here is what a good design brief includes:
Your brand and business
A quick 2-3 sentence summary is perfect. For example, "We are a small, family-owned fruit & vegetable shop in Melbourne, Australia. We are looking to update our existing branding to attract new clients".
Target audience
Here, you might say something like, “Both men and women between the ages of 25 and 40 who are looking for outdoor adventures.”
Stylistic preferences
This is where you can really describe the visual style you're looking to achieve with your design request. Whether you want something artistic and bold or sophisticated and minimal, this is your chance to let designers know.
Colors
Set on particular colors? Choose from the color palette. Alternatively, allow designers to choose which colors would work best for your brand by selecting the multi-colored palette 'Let designers make suggestions'.
Reference images
Trust us, one of the best ways to inform and inspire your designers is to provide images of other designs you like. We think there are 2 good ways to do this.
1. Uploading images to your brief. Designspiration.com is a great place to source examples! And for logo contests, selecting example logos plus providing a written explanation as to why you selected each will drive the designers in the right direction.
2. Another good way to do this is making a Pinterest board and linking to it in your brief.
Anything else?
If you have any special requests or comments, add that info in the last box of the brief.
You’re now ready to get a design you love!