The single highest-leverage thing you can do before any creative project is write a good brief. Most clients don’t, because they think the studio will extract it from them on a discovery call. We do, mostly – but that call goes from 90 minutes to 30, and the resulting quote is 30% more accurate, when there is a written brief on the table to start from.
This piece is the template we wish more clients sent us. You can copy and paste it into a Google Doc or an email. It is genuinely short – a good brief is rarely more than two pages.
Why bother writing it down
Three reasons.
First, clarity for you. The act of writing out your business in a structured way often surfaces gaps in your own thinking. Founders often realise mid-brief that they don’t actually know who their best customer is, or that their stated positioning doesn’t match their pricing. Better to find that out before you’ve committed to a brand project.
Second, better quotes. Studios quote against information. A written brief means the quote is based on what you actually need, not the studio’s guess at what you might need. That usually means a lower, more accurate quote – and a faster turnaround on getting it.
Third, a more useful first call. Without a written brief, the first 60 minutes of a discovery call are spent extracting information you already have in your head. With one, the call starts where it should start: discussing approach, asking the studio hard questions, and getting a feel for whether you want to work with them.
The template
Copy this and fill it in. Skip any section that genuinely doesn’t apply, but try to fill in everything you can. If you find yourself unable to answer a section, that itself is useful information – flag it for the studio.
1. About the business
One short paragraph: what does the business do, for whom, and how long has it existed? If you have a one-line description you use in conversation, use it here. If you don’t, write one now – two sentences maximum.
2. The customer
Who actually buys from you, in plain language? Not a demographic description (“women 30-45”), but a useful one (“freelance accountants in Cape Town earning over R500k who are tired of dealing with SARS personally”). If you have multiple customer types, list the top two or three. If you can include a real quote from a real customer about why they chose you, do.
3. What is the project, in one sentence
Not “we need a brand refresh”. Try: “We need a brand refresh because our current identity is from 2018, when we were a freelancer; we are now a team of 12 selling to enterprise clients and the brand is being noticed for the wrong reasons in pitch meetings.”
The “because” clause matters. It tells the studio what success looks like.
4. What is in scope, what is out
A bulleted list works. For example:
In scope:
- New logo and identity system
- Type and colour system
- Brand guidelines document
- Homepage redesign
Out of scope:
- Naming
- Full website (we will tender separately)
- Social content production
Studios will probe and possibly suggest things you didn’t include. Writing this list forces you to think about it, and the studio’s suggestions become a useful conversation rather than a surprise mid-project.
5. The audiences and channels
Where does the brand need to live in the next 12 months? List the touchpoints, prioritised:
- Website
- Pitch decks
- Conference booth
- Vehicle livery
The order tells the studio where to focus. A brand built primarily for LinkedIn and pitch decks looks different from one built primarily for vehicle livery. Both can be good, but they are different optimisation problems.
6. The competition
Name three to five competitors. For each, one sentence on what they do well and one on what you do better. This is the section most clients skip; it is also the section the studio finds most useful, because it sets up the positioning argument.
If you don’t know your competitors well enough to write this, the brief is a useful prompt to find out. Studios can do the research, but you will save them time and yourself money by doing it first.
7. The brand you’d like to be associated with (and the one you’d hate to be)
Two short lists. Three to five brands you admire and that feel relevant to where you want to go. Three to five that have your category positioning wrong, or that you would hate to be confused with. This is not about copying – the references give the studio fast access to your taste and ambition without requiring 20 minutes of conversation.
A useful tip: write one sentence next to each, explaining what specifically you like or dislike. “I like this brand’s restraint” tells the studio more than “I like this brand”.
8. The success criteria
How will you know the project worked, a year from now? List two or three measurable things. Examples:
- We win more enterprise pitches than we did in 2025 (currently winning 40%, target 55%)
- We are no longer asked “are you a startup?” in early conversations
- The sales team voluntarily uses the brand materials without rebuilding them
Concrete success criteria are rare and incredibly useful. Most clients write something vague like “we look more premium” – which is fine, but cannot really be assessed. The more specific you can be, the better.
9. Timing
When does the work need to be live, and why? Real deadlines (a launch, a conference, a fundraise close) help the studio prioritise. Soft deadlines (“we’d like it by end of year”) get scheduled around real deadlines, which is fine, but be honest about which kind you have.
10. Budget
Write a real range. “R150,000 to R220,000”. Not a single number, not “TBC”, not “we’d like a quote first”.
Studios that won’t quote against a range are not being principled – they are trying to scope upward. Studios that will quote against a range can tell you what you can have for that money, what you’d need more for, and what you could get for less. This is the conversation you want.
If you genuinely don’t know what the work should cost, ask the studio for a range over a discovery call before you write your budget – just ask explicitly for a range, not a quote.
11. Who decides
Name the one person with final say. If there are stakeholders who will provide input, name them too, and clarify their role: advisory, approver, informed. The studio needs to know who they are designing for.
12. Anything else
The miscellaneous section. Things you’ve tried that didn’t work. Things you’ve already rejected and don’t want to revisit. Other studios you’ve spoken to and what didn’t click. Hard constraints (a colour you can’t use, a name you can’t change). Anything that would be useful for the studio to know before the first conversation.
What the brief is for
This document is not a contract. It is a conversation starter. The studio will read it, ask questions, push back on parts of it, and quote against what you’ve described. Once you sign on, the brief becomes the reference document for the project – not a sacred text, but the shared understanding that everything else is built on.
Most projects that go sideways trace back to a misaligned brief. The studio thought the scope was X, the client thought it was Y, and nobody noticed until the work was halfway done. A written brief makes those misalignments visible in week one instead of week eight.
A note on the things you can’t write yet
If you cannot answer some of these sections honestly, that is fine – but write down what you don’t know rather than guessing. “We don’t know who our best customer is, we need to find out as part of this project” is a much better brief than a made-up persona.
Sometimes the right output of the first studio conversation is “we should do some discovery work before we scope the brand project”. That is a legitimate first phase, and you will pay less for it as a clearly-scoped first phase than as discovery-disguised-as-execution that surfaces gaps mid-project.
If you write a brief using this template and want feedback before sending it to a studio, send it through to us. We are happy to read short briefs and give you a quick read on whether they are clear enough to quote against – even if the project isn’t right for us.