A good brief is short. One page covering what the work has to achieve, who it is for, and how you will know it worked will get you better results than ten pages describing what you want it to look like.
Start with the problem, not the solution
The most useful opening line is a sentence about what is going wrong. "Our website looks dated and we lose people on the pricing page" gives an agency somewhere to aim. "We need a five-page website with a blue header" hands over a shopping list and quietly removes the expertise you are paying for.
Say who the work is for
Not demographics. Describe the person who has to act, what they already believe, and what would make them hesitate. A procurement manager comparing three suppliers behaves nothing like a founder buying on instinct at 11pm, and the same design will not serve both.
Define what success looks like
Put a number on it where you can. More enquiries, shorter sales calls, fewer support emails, a higher average order. If the only measure is whether the leadership team likes it, expect several rounds of revisions and a result nobody can defend.
List the hard constraints
Everything genuinely fixed: a launch date tied to an event, an existing logo you cannot change, a platform your team already runs on, accessibility requirements, regulatory wording that must appear. Constraints early save rework later. They also tell an agency whether the timeline is realistic before anyone signs.
Share what already exists
Current brand files, previous campaigns, analytics, customer research, the sales deck that works. Also share the things that failed and why. That is often more useful than the successes.
Say what you do not want
A short list of no-go territory saves a whole round. Competitors you do not want to resemble, a colour tied to a rival, a tone that would not survive your board. Two or three lines is enough.
Be honest about budget and deadline
Withholding the budget to see what an agency quotes wastes both sides' time. A range is fine. It lets a studio propose work that fits rather than guess, and it surfaces a mismatch in the first meeting instead of the third.
A template you can copy
Fill in seven lines and you have a better brief than most:
- The problem we are trying to solve
- Who this is for, and what they currently think
- What success looks like, with a number if we have one
- Hard constraints: dates, platforms, assets, rules
- What already exists, including what did not work
- Where not to go
- Budget range and decision maker
The mistake that costs the most
Not naming a decision maker. Projects stall when feedback arrives from five people who disagree with each other and nobody has authority to settle it. One person who can approve, gathering input from the rest, is worth more to a timeline than any amount of upfront planning.
Send us a rough brief
It does not have to be polished. A paragraph about the problem and what success looks like is enough to start a useful conversation.
Start a projectCommon questions
How long should a creative brief be?
One page for most projects. Longer briefs tend to describe solutions rather than problems, which narrows the work before it starts. Attach supporting material separately if there is a lot of it.
Should I include a budget in the brief?
Yes, at least a range. It lets an agency scope work that actually fits, and it surfaces a mismatch in the first conversation rather than after two rounds of proposals.