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What a design brief is
A design brief is the document that starts a design project. It states the goal, the audience, the deliverables, the constraints and the deadline, in enough detail that a designer who has never met you can start work and a reviewer who was not in the meeting can judge the result. Asana's guide on the subject puts the useful length at one to three pages; for most marketing requests, one is enough.
It differs from a creative brief, which describes the concept and tone the creative team will pursue; teams disagree on which comes first, and it does not matter as long as both exist. It is not a spec sheet either: the brief says what the design must achieve, not which hex code to use on the button.
Why the brief decides the outcome
A designer can only answer the question you asked. "Make a LinkedIn carousel about our new feature" is a task. "Make a six-slide LinkedIn carousel that gets a product marketer at a 50 to 200 person SaaS company to click through to the webinar page, in our brand system, by Thursday" is a brief. The second one produces a usable first draft; the first one produces a guess and a second round.
On a design subscription, where you pay a flat fee and brief as you go, the brief is the whole interface. A clear one comes back in 24 to 48 hours; a vague one comes back as a question.
The 9 parts of a design brief
1. Context: what this is and why now
Two or three sentences. What the company does if the designer is new, what is happening (a launch, a campaign, a rebrand), and why this piece exists. Context is what lets a designer make the hundred small decisions you did not write down.
2. The goal and how you will measure it
One goal per brief. Awareness, clicks, sign-ups, replies, a signature on a contract. Then the measure: click-through rate on the ad, demo requests from the page, the investor saying yes. A brief with two goals gets a design that serves neither.
3. The audience
Who will see it, what they already know, what they are skeptical about, and what they are doing when they see it (scrolling at lunch, reading a deck in a board meeting). If you have a persona, link it. If you do not, three sentences beat nothing.
4. The message and the copy
Write the copy first. Placeholder text produces placeholder design, because the designer sizes the layout to words that will change. For a carousel, write every slide. For a landing page, write every section, even roughly. If the designer is also expected to tighten the copy, say so.
5. Deliverables, formats and specs
Exactly what you expect back: the number of pieces, the sizes, the file types, the platforms. "Three static Meta ad formats (1:1, 4:5, 9:16), PNG and the editable file" leaves nothing to interpret. "Some ads" leaves everything.
6. Brand assets and constraints
Where the logo, fonts, colors and guidelines live. What must appear (legal lines, partner logos, a disclaimer). What must not (a competitor's color, a photo style the CEO hates). Constraints speed designers up; they do not slow them down.
7. References: two you like, one you do not
Two links or screenshots with one sentence each on what works, and one example of what to avoid. References are the fastest way to transfer taste. Without them, the first round is the designer guessing your taste; with them, it is the designer applying it.
8. Timeline and budget
The real deadline, not the padded one, and what it is tied to (a launch date, an ad flight, a board meeting). On a per-project engagement, the budget. On a subscription, the number of requests this will consume, because a landing page and a logo refresh are not the same unit of work.
9. The decision-maker and the feedback process
One name who gives final approval, and how feedback will arrive (a single consolidated round in the tool, not five people in five Slack threads). In our experience, this line removes more revision rounds than any other.
Design brief template
Copy, paste, fill in. Delete any line you cannot fill in; a short honest brief beats a long vague one.
- Project name:
- Context: what this is, why now, in two or three sentences.
- Goal: one sentence. Measured by: one metric.
- Audience: who, what they know, what they are skeptical of, where they will see it.
- Key message: the one thing they should remember.
- Copy: final text or a solid draft, section by section or slide by slide.
- Deliverables: number of pieces, formats, sizes, file types, platform.
- Brand assets: links to logo, fonts, colors, guidelines. Must include: Must avoid:
- References: two we like and why; one we do not and why.
- Deadline: date and what it is tied to. Budget or requests:
- Approver: one name. Feedback: where and how, in one round.
A filled-in example
A hypothetical brief for a B2B software company, written the way we would want to receive it.
- Project name: Q4 webinar landing page.
- Context: We sell invoicing software to accounting firms. On November 12 we host a webinar on the new e-invoicing rules. The page is the only place people can register.
- Goal: Registrations. Measured by: registration rate from paid LinkedIn traffic; the current generic page converts poorly and we want a page built for this one audience.
- Audience: Partners and office managers at accounting firms of 5 to 50 people. They know the rules are changing, they are skeptical of software demos disguised as education, they will arrive from a LinkedIn ad on a laptop during work hours.
- Key message: In 45 minutes you will know what changes on January 1 and what to do about it, from a tax lawyer and a practicing accountant, not from our sales team.
- Copy: attached, section by section: hero, three bullets on what you will learn, two speaker bios, agenda, registration form, FAQ.
- Deliverables: one landing page design, desktop and mobile, in Figma, with the component styles our Webflow developer can rebuild; one 1200 by 630 social preview image.
- Brand assets: guidelines and logo in the shared drive. Must include: both speaker photos, the partner firm's logo. Must avoid: stock photos of people pointing at laptops.
- References: two competitor event pages we like for their agenda layout and form placement (links attached); one of our own past pages we do not like because the form was below three screens of text.
- Deadline: design by October 20, tied to the ad flight starting October 27. Requests: one.
- Approver: the head of marketing. Feedback: consolidated comments in Figma, one round, within 48 hours of delivery.
Everything a designer needs is on that page. Nothing on it required a designer to write.
What to add for each format
- Social posts and carousels: platform and placement, slide count, the copy per slide, whether the template must be reusable by your team in Canva or Figma afterwards.
- Landing pages: the traffic source, the single conversion action, the sections in order, and who builds it (Webflow, WordPress, a developer), because that decides how the file is handed over.
- Pitch decks and presentations: the room it will be shown in, the slide count, whether it is presented or sent, and the numbers that must appear exactly as given. See our presentation design service for how decks are typically scoped.
- Ad creatives: every format and ratio, the offer, the legal lines, and what the ad links to. Our advertising and ad creative design page lists the usual formats.
- Print: final dimensions, bleed and margins, paper and finish, the printer's file requirements, and the quantity, because it changes how bold a design can afford to be.
- Motion and video: duration, aspect ratio, where sound is allowed, a rough storyboard or at least the sequence of messages, and two reference animations with the pace you want.
- Websites and redesigns: the sitemap, which pages are templates and which are unique, the content you already have, and the search rankings that must survive. Our website wireframe guide covers the step before visual design.
The five mistakes we see most
- No copy. The designer fills the space with Latin and the layout breaks when the real words arrive.
- Two goals. Awareness and conversion in the same piece produce a piece that does neither.
- References without reasons. A link says "something like this"; a sentence says which part.
- No decision-maker. Five reviewers, five directions, three rounds.
- The padded deadline. When the designer learns the real date, the schedule has already been built on the fake one.
How briefs work on a design subscription
On a per-project engagement, a weak brief costs you a revision round. On a subscription, it costs you a request. Design Elite's Prestige plan, at 949.90 EUR a month excluding VAT (the European sales tax), about $1,050, includes three design requests a month, worked one at a time; Elite, at 1,399.90 EUR (roughly $1,550 at the same rate), makes requests unlimited. Every plan includes unlimited revisions and a dedicated project manager who reads the brief before a designer starts, so a missing line becomes a question in an hour rather than a wrong design in two days. The template above is the one we would hand a new client on day one. The pricing and what each plan covers are on our design subscription page.
How this article was made
Drafted with AI assistance, then checked line by line by the Design Elite team: the only external figure, the one-to-three-page range, was read on Asana's guide on October 6, 2026, and every Design Elite figure comes from our published pricing.
FAQ
What are the four parts of a design brief?
The shortest useful version has four: the goal, the audience, the deliverables and the constraints (brand, timeline, budget). School design curricula teach longer specification lists, often seven items covering function, user, materials, size and cost; for marketing work, the nine-part structure above splits the four into the lines designers actually ask about, such as copy, references and who approves.
What should a design brief include?
Context, one goal with a measure, the audience, the key message and copy, the deliverables with formats and specs, brand assets and constraints, two or three references with reasons, the deadline and budget, and the name of the decision-maker. If you can only include three, make them the goal, the copy and the deadline.
How long should a design brief be?
One page for most marketing requests. Asana's guide on design briefs puts the range at one to three pages and advises including only details that will influence design decisions. A brief gets long when it tries to be the strategy document; link to that instead.
Who writes the design brief?
The person who owns the outcome, usually the marketer or founder requesting the work. Designers can help structure it, and a good project manager will send it back with questions, but the goal, the audience and the copy have to come from the business.
What is an example of a design brief?
The webinar landing page brief above: context, one goal with a metric, a described audience, a key message, the copy attached, exact deliverables, brand assets, references with reasons, a deadline tied to an ad flight, one approver and one feedback round. Swap the nouns and it works for a deck, an ad set or a social campaign.
