How to brief a graphic designer and get what you need

Most design projects that go wrong do so before the designer opens a file. The request is vague, the content is still changing, or nobody has agreed who signs off. The designer fills the gaps with guesses, and the team spends weeks correcting them.

A design brief is the short document that prevents this. The UK Design Council advises starting with the obvious: what you do and who you do it for.¹ It also notes that writing these basics down can reveal disagreements inside your own team, which is far better discovered on day one than at the final approval.¹

Do not assume the designer knows your context. The Design Council suggests keeping the brief fairly concise but adding detail through appended documents or links to more information.¹ Bond's ethical content guidelines make a similar point about content production: a more focused brief leaves more time to produce content you know will be used.²

Business advisers and design bodies broadly agree on the core contents. Northern Ireland's official business support site lists organisation background, project background and aims, budget, timescale, approval and management, and design constraints such as the need to fit with other designs.³ The Design Council adds objectives, deliverables, how the work will be staged and assessed, and the roles of your team.¹

In our own practice, the most useful briefs fit on two pages. This design brief template covers what most organisations need:

• About us: who you are, what you do and who you serve, in three sentences.
• The project: what it is, why it is needed now and what it should achieve.
• Audience: who will read or see it, where, and what they already know.
• Deliverables: every item, its format, size, languages and number of pages.
• Content: what is final, what is still coming and who supplies it.
• Constraints: brand guidelines, partner logos, print or platform specifications.
• Timeline: draft, feedback and final dates, including fixed launch dates.
• People: who gives feedback, who approves and how many review rounds are planned.

It is tempting to write "make it blue, with a big photo on the cover". Resist it. The Design Council advises describing the goal rather than the answer, because the right solution emerges from teamwork between you and the designer.¹ It also encourages vivid language that conveys the effect you want, such as an exhibition that stops people in their tracks.¹

So instead of colours and layouts, describe outcomes. "District health officers should find the three headline results in under a minute." "Donors should see that this is a serious, evidence-based organisation." "Young people should want to share this on WhatsApp." These sentences give a designer something to solve, and give you a fair test when the drafts arrive.

Expect the designer to question the brief. The Design Council notes that strong projects often refine the brief together with the designer.¹ Treat those questions as a sign of a careful designer, not a difficult one.

Design is shaped by content. A chart built on placeholder numbers may not work when the real figures arrive, and a layout planned for 400 words will break with 900. Wherever possible, send approved text, the actual data files and the photographs you intend to use with the brief.

Check the rights and consent behind every image before it reaches the designer. Bond's guidelines state that, without evidence of informed consent, images should not be used for any promotion or fundraising purposes.² For stock images, they recommend a guarantee that anyone identifiable in the image gave informed consent, and that correct copyright terms are agreed.² Note in the brief which images are cleared for which uses, so the designer does not place a photograph where it should not appear.

Include your brand guidelines, logo files and any partner or donor visibility rules. If co-branding requirements are not in the brief, they tend to arrive as late corrections that unsettle the whole layout.

Accessibility costs little when it is planned and a great deal when it is retrofitted. State the standard you expect. For text, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines require a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, or 3:1 for large text, at Level AA.⁴ Pale grey text on a white page or white text over a busy photograph often fails this test.

Ask for text alternatives too. W3C says images must have text alternatives that describe the information or function they represent.⁵ For complex images such as graphs and diagrams, it recommends a complete text equivalent of the data or information.⁵ Add to your deliverables list an accessible version of each infographic or chart, and decide in the brief who writes the alt text: your team, who knows the content, or the designer, who knows the visual.

Feedback is where many projects lose time. Name one person who collects comments from colleagues, resolves contradictions and sends a single consolidated set to the designer. The Northern Ireland guidance recommends setting out in the brief which internal teams are involved and who will take part in approval.³

When you give feedback, say what is not working rather than prescribing the fix. The design guide published by OCASI, a Canadian council of community agencies, recommends exactly this, noting that designs often do not work the first time.⁶ "The key message is hard to find" lets the designer find the best answer. "Make the title bigger" may solve one problem and create another.

Be clear about when a stage is finished. OCASI's guide also advises confirming when work is fully completed.⁶ A written "approved" at each stage protects both sides and stops settled decisions from being reopened.

The final handover deserves a line in the brief. List the formats you need: print-ready PDFs with the printer's specifications, low-resolution PDFs for email, images sized for each social platform, and editable source files if your team will update the material later. Ask for fonts and licences to be documented, so that someone can reopen the files next year.

Finally, keep a copy of the brief with the finished work. When the next report or campaign comes round, you will start from a tested document rather than a blank page.

• Organisation, project and audience described in plain words
• Every deliverable listed with format, size and languages
• Final text, real data and cleared images attached
• Brand guidelines and partner logo rules included
• Contrast and alt text requirements stated
• Draft, feedback and final dates agreed
• One person named to consolidate feedback and approve
• Handover files and source formats specified