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The Professional Designer's Legal Survival Kit: Free Creative Brief Template
Marc Schenker
May 25, 2021 · 13 min read

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Free Creative Brief Template
Get a customizable template to organize and outline your clients’ creative projects.
Download it hereProject Summary
This section ought to be the first among all the sections you include in your creative brief. It just makes sense to begin with a paragraph or two about the entire scope of the project that you and your client envision together.
Objective
It will be very helpful to define the goal(s) of your project very early on in the brief, so that all parties know exactly what they’re working toward. There should be no miscommunication about what you’re trying to achieve for your client, so this statement needs to be spelled out very clearly.
- The reason behind the project
- What you want to accomplish with it
- Any problem(s) you want to address and solve
- The metrics you’ll use to measure success or failure (Example: if you’re designing a landing page, success could be measured by the number of click-throughs to the main website)
Target Audience
This addresses whom you’re serving by completing the project. Another critical part of the brief, this part should establish exactly whom your client’s customer or user is that you want to reach with this campaign. Here’s the opportunity to get very granular with this analysis: Include any demographic details, behavioral habits, and specific background information you have about the customer or user. If you haven’t already done so, first conduct the relevant market analysis you need to properly identify your target audience. The data you gather from this process is invaluable and will help you fill out this section in a very thorough way. List down who your audience is, why they should care about the client’s product or service, and what they think of the client’s brand.
The Competition
Who is your client’s competition? Here’s your chance to identify them—because they’re gunning for the same target audience that your client is vying for. The more you know about your competitors, the more you can take the necessary steps to thwart their attempts to steal market share from your client. This section presents the perfect place for a SWOT analysis: A sizing up of any external threats and opportunities your client faces. When you delve deeply into the weaknesses of your client’s product or service, you instantly learn how to cope with and head off any threats to market share that would ordinarily catch the client unaware. The SWOT acronym boils down to the following:- Strengths – Identify the advantages your client has over its competitors, as well as its unique selling proposition
- Weaknesses – Identify what your client can still improve upon in its product or service offerings
- Opportunities – Identify any opportunities that are feasible, in addition to surprising trends
- Threats – Identify if anything your competitors are doing could potentially put obstacles in the way of your client’s brand
Deliverables
Here’s where you specify the deliverables for your project. Every project is unique and will have different requirements. List them in this section, so that you have a definitive list you can always refer back to as the project goes on.
- A style guide (a one-pager or longer)
- A logo design that’s suitable for both the web and print
- A collection of banner ads
- A Blackletter typeface
- A series of resume templates specifically for designers
- Website themes, whether for WordPress, Drupal or Magento
Tone
Deeply interwoven with your overall messaging and communication, tone is how you get your message across. Are you trying to come across as serious and professional or perhaps more casual and relaxed? This is a significant factor to consider because it affects how the entire campaign is received by your client’s target audience. There should be brand alignment between the tone used in the project and how your brand is already perceived in the marketplace. To give guidance on communication and guarantee that it’s consistent with the project objective, define in this section your client’s strategic positioning and necessary messages that have to be covered.
Messaging
Once you have the tone worked out, you can shift focus to the overall question of what you want to say with the entire project or campaign. Figure out what words to use in your blog post, landing page, packaging design, website, social-media campaign, brochures, banners, etc. Ask yourself if you know what you want the target audience to come away with after interacting with your client’s product or service. Now’s the ideal time to also decide what medium to use to communicate your message. Are you going to use web-based properties to deliver it, such as email, social media, podcasts or video? Maybe all of the above?
Scheduling and Timing
As with any project, the timeline is critical. It helps you stay on track to complete the campaign by a certain time and ensures you don’t fall behind. Ideally, you will have already talked about the completion date for the project with your client at one of your earliest meetings.
Budget
Pretty straightforward, here’s where you crunch the numbers and set your budget. Any project or campaign needs a set budget to guard against any cost overruns that are likely to occur without the proper discipline. You and your client need to come to an agreement on how much they’re going to spend before you begin working on the project. This protects you against not being paid or underpaid; it also protects the client against any scope creep and getting a bigger bill from you than expected at the completion of the campaign. By setting the budget ahead of time, there are no surprises for both parties, which helps to maintain the integrity of the designer-client relationship.
Visuals
Depending on the type of project or campaign you’re working on, visuals can be an integral part that ensures success. For example, if you’re designing and developing a new site, then the kinds of hero images and stock photos you select will have a big impact on its attractiveness and overall usability. If you’re putting together a catalog or a magazine, then images have a massive impact on readability. Decide whether you’re going to be creating your own images—by, say, hiring a professional photographer—or using existing ones.
Non-Negotiables
These are the absolutes that must be part of the final project and can’t be neglected. Think of these as the mandatory elements that make the project successful; without them, a key piece of the project would be missing.
- Key stakeholder information for approval purposes
- A logo
- A signature tagline
- A breakdown of the approval process
- Certain colors that won’t do the client’s branding any favors
- Specific words and phrases that may be used already by the competition
- No radio silence from either party and no longer than one day for responses to requests for feedback
Survive and Thrive as a Designer
Your creative brief is your best bet to ensure that your projects and campaigns go off without a hitch and come to completion. It also increases the chances of having satisfied clients who’ll either drive more business your way or give you testimonials and recommendations. While writing a creative brief can be a bit time-consuming, it’s much better to take some time with your client at the very beginning to hash everything out, so you know where both of you stand. Putting in that work ahead of the project can save you literally hours of frustration in the way of misunderstandings, scope creep, and unhappy clients, when it’s all said and done. So the next time you have a new lead, meet with them, sit them down, and go over everything in detail about the project you’ll be tackling. Then, compose your creative brief in conjunction with your client, so you have your definitive blueprint for guaranteeing project success.Products Seen In This Post:

Download your template
Free Creative Brief Template
Get a customizable template to organize and outline your clients' creative projects.
Download it hereAbout the Author

Marc Schenker
Marc is a copywriter and marketer who runs The Glorious Company, a marketing agency. An expert in business and marketing, he helps businesses and companies of all sizes get the most bang for their ad bucks.
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