Your guide to writing the perfect brief

We know the importance of the 'Client to Designer relationship'. It's paramount for you to feel that you can trust us with your business' appearance to the outside world. Designers need the ability to understand, listen and translate what you say into effective visual solutions that achieve the correct tone of voice and focus on the right audience.

This isn't always quite as straight forward as you'd think, here's an example for you to try: think of a dog in a yard. What do you picture? Automatically I thought of an Alsatian on a chain (I'm sure there's some psychological hidden meaning there!), Lea thought of a Jack Russell in a big garden & Tom thought of a black dog on small grassy patch. There are so many variants to this simple scene and people draw on different memories and ideals based on their own experiences. 

In the studio we need to be able to take what a client suggests and filter through all of these possibilities to get, not only the best solution for the project but to keep up with the latest trends and also meet the client's expectations. Thankfully you're in safe hands! This is exactly the reason why we love what we do - each job is unique and no day is ever the same as the last.

However there is a way to speed up the process and to accomplish exactly what you want and this is via a good brief. Writing a brief will help you to focus on what you want to achieve and also helps save time (and money) during the design process. We've put together a few tips for putting together your next design brief:

A summary of your business

Please don't assume we know everything about what you do, although we have experience in working with a lot of different sectors it always helps to know how you work and what you do. Each business is unique so it's important that we don't base our designs on any pre-conceived ideas of how you might work.

Where you are in your market? 

Are you high-end or 'cheap and cheerful'? What is your USP? Who is your target audience? How do you usually interact with them? Wherever you want to stand we can help you achieve that with your marketing materials. 

What are your aims?

What goals would you like to achieve as a result of your new marketing materials? Where would you like it to be seen and what would you like it to say? Do you have a style preference? 

Budget. 

Budgets can sometimes be a tricky subject, the current climate usually dictates an 'as little as possible' response. But think of it this way - if you're looking to buy a new car and walk into the showroom you know how much you'd like to spend - there's little point in test driving a Ferrari if your budget won't stretch to it. So if you have an idea of how much you'd realistically like to spend - tell us, this way we can offer you the most suitable solutions. 

Deadline. 

Do you have a specific launch date in mind? We can work to tight deadlines however having more time allows us to fully research and plan a strategy, develop the design with client feedback and allow plenty of time for any potential hold-ups during the production process. So giving us a realistic timeframe is best. 

If all of this seems a bit daunting don't worry! Give us a call and we will send you a quick questionnaire for you to complete which will give us all of the necessary information to get started. 

So what's your vision? Get in touch if you would like Root Studio to help your business grow!