The Design Brief

The document that gathers everything up front — so that when you're in creative mode, you're designing instead of hunting for files.

The design brief is about to become your new best mate. It might feel a bit boring if you’re itching to jump straight into Canva or you’ve already got an idea buzzing around in your head. But trust us – a design brief will save you from disappearing down rabbit holes and wasting time on stuff that misses the mark.

When you work with a professional designer, they’ll ask for a brief. If you’re both the marketer and the designer (wearing all the hats, as usual), you’ll want to do the same for yourself. A good brief helps you gather all the key information upfront, so you’re not second-guessing later. Think of it as a roadmap: it gets you to the canvas quicker, with fewer wrong turns, and keeps the project on track from the start.

If you are creating for a client, a clear brief is even more valuable because it sets expectations, captures their vision early, and gives you both a point of reference if feedback or revisions are needed. It is also the best time to collate all the assets you will need such as logos, imagery, copy, and brand guidelines so everything is ready to go before you start designing.

A design brief just pulls the key info together in one spot. That way, when you’re in creative mode, you’re not wasting brainpower hunting down niggly details like “what size is this supposed to be again?” or “where is the logo file?” Nothing kills creative flow faster than admin mid-design.

Everything the brief gathers up A design brief document at the centre, with eight things feeding into it: brand assets, fonts, colour palette, imagery, copy, format specs, audience and deadline. Brand assets Aa Fonts Colour palette Imagery Copy Format specs Audience Deadline DESIGN BRIEF
Everything the brief gathers up. Chase these down once, at the start, and they stop interrupting you later.

What goes in each section

Date
When you filled this in. Handy later when you're looking back through a folder of old briefs.
Project title
A simple, descriptive name so you know what it is at a glance.
Deadline
When it needs to be delivered, published or signed off. Everything else works back from here.
Objective
The one thing this design has to do. Promote a sale, get sign-ups, raise awareness. Pick the single most important — competing goals weaken the work.
Target audience
Who it's for. Demographics, behaviours, or simply what they're drawn to. An educated guess beats a blank.
Deliverables
The actual outputs. One item, or a set of adaptations across different channels and sizes.
Format specs
The technical detail for each deliverable: size, resolution, bleed, file type. This is the one that's expensive to get wrong late.
Approval process
Who signs off, how it works, and by when. Build it into your timeline rather than discovering it at the end.
Links to essential assets
A shareable folder holding the brand assets — logo, fonts, guidelines — plus a second for imagery. Chase these down once, up front.
Moodboard and creative direction
Where the look is heading. You'll fill this in after the mood-boarding lesson.
Copywriting
The words, and any word-count limits. Often written before the design so you know how much space they need.
Anything else
Constraints, things to avoid, past work that did or didn't land.

Size, resolution, bleed, file type — not sure yet? That's fine at this stage. We go through all of it properly in Specs and File Setup a few lessons from now. If you want the short version today, the Library has the key definitions on a page you can keep open beside you.

Open the Library →

Assignment 01

Build your Design Brief

You’ll begin creating a working design brief that we’ll keep building on throughout the course. If you’re already working in marketing, use a real project from your role. If you’re not, use the mock scenario below — or a personal project, if you have one in mind.

Mock scenario — optional

Evergreen Wellness is a fictitious business we’ve invented for this course — a small local operation offering health and lifestyle services: yoga, nutrition workshops and mindfulness sessions. They’re planning a Spring Wellness Workshop from 17–23 September and want marketing materials to promote it.

Activities include morning yoga sessions, nutrition and meal-planning workshops, guided meditation, and optional herbal tea tastings featuring products from their own range. They rely heavily on print flyers and Instagram.

Their clients range in age, typically 25 to 50, are health-conscious, and mostly female. Jenni is the owner and head yoga instructor, and would like to give feedback on the design before it’s finalised.

Their location is 32 Mock Street, Cambridge, and bookings and enquiries go through evergreenwellness.yoga.

None of it is real — the business, the workshop, Jenni, the address and the website are all made up for the exercise, so design for them however you like.

Download the scenario ↗

Step 1: Set up your brief

Open the template at the end of this lesson and fill in these sections for now — the rest come later in the course. The guide above explains what each one is asking for.

  • Date
  • Project title
  • Deadline
  • Objective
  • Target audience
  • Deliverables
  • Approval process

Your template

The Design Brief

Every field from this lesson, with room to fill in. Take the PDF if you'd rather print it and write by hand, or the Word version to type straight into.

PDF — print it → Word — type into it →
What’s next

This is the foundation of your brief. Keep it handy — we’ll build on it in later lessons with assets, specs, creative direction, mood boards, thumbnails and more.