Brand Design Process: Is the Brief the Key to Success?

Speaking of a company’s image, logo, or visual identity, the “brief” is usually where everything begins.

The brief serves a similar function to a map; it helps transition from abstract ideas to a concrete concept, understanding the brand, its goals, and expectations. This tool plays a crucial role in branding processes, enabling designers and clients to achieve a common vision and creatively express the brand’s identity.

It is a fundamental, concise, and specific document, most often developed to carry out advertising, marketing, or visual campaigns. It plays a significant role in the creation process, encompassing key information about planned design activities and guidelines for the agency entrusted with its execution.

Precision and clarity are crucial in this case.

The brief leaves no room for misunderstandings or convoluted, unclear messages that could be interpreted in various ways. It is a set of guidelines based on which designers can start working on implementing the established plan of action.

The document should include the most important data regarding the brand, its goals, target audience, benchmarks, and a preliminary outline of the visual identity.

Why can preparing it help avoid many additional hours of work?

Understanding the Brand

The brief helps designers understand the essence of the brand, its mission, values, and unique features. This is crucial to create an image that authentically reflects what sets the company apart.

Clarity and Clear Objectives

The brief sets the direction the project should take, eliminating misunderstandings and ensuring that the team’s work is focused on the right goals.

Time Efficiency

For those involved in the project, the brief is a map that simply helps save time. Instead of guessing what the client wants to achieve, designers have clear guidelines in front of them, enabling faster and more efficient work.

Key elements of the brief:

Campaign or Project Goal

This is the foundation of the brief. Defining what you want to achieve through the project is essential for understanding the direction of further actions.

Target Audience

Precisely determining who the project is intended for allows for adapting the appropriate message and communication tone.

Competition

Analyzing the competition helps understand how the company can stand out in the market and what its strengths are.

Message and Tone

The brief should include guidelines on choosing the message and tone, whether it should be a humorous, serious, educational, or emotional approach.

Media and Platforms

Determining on which media or platforms the campaign will take place – whether it’s social media, a website, or other channels.

Deadline and Budget

It is also crucial to specify the date or period in which the campaign is to be implemented. Defining the estimated budget allows the agency to adjust plans to current financial realities.

What to use when preparing a brief?

There are many IT tools that can help in this process. Let’s look at a few of them:

Kanban boards (such as Trello or Jira) allow the creation of boards that provide space for organizing tasks related to the project. You can create project cards and enter all the details, goals, expectations, and deadlines related to your work.

Project management platforms (e.g., Monday) offer features for tracking project progress, assigning tasks, setting deadlines, and constant communication between teams. Document creation applications, such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word, help create a structured document containing sections for project goals, product/service description, target group, client expectations, deadlines, budget constraints, etc.

As the creative industry evolves, the brief also undergoes evolution. Today, teams can use many tools available on the market that significantly facilitate the creation and communication around the brief, which in turn allows for more efficient work.

Undoubtedly, the brief is the key to success in marketing, advertising, or branding projects. This is all thanks to clarity, efficiency, and excellent communication between teams that it provides.

31/03/2023 Mateusz Rozynek