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Harvard Business Review states that just over one third of projects are considered successful.

That is, meeting objectives on time, staying within budget and delivering expected benefits (HBR).   

Learn how to craft strong design briefs – the often overlooked key ingredient to a digital project - and how they benefit the project.   


“Unity is strength…when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.”   

Mattie Stepanek 


Understanding the Many Brief Types

Multidisciplinary in nature, briefs come in many forms - design / creative briefs, UX or UI briefs, proposals, guidelines, briefing documents, operating procedures, and project blueprints. Regardless of industry or format, they outline the project, communicate its end goal and the steps to achieve this.  


From government to non-for-profits, architectural firms, and every industry in between, you’ll find clear digital design briefs are crucial to project completion, cohesiveness, and success. A good brief is concise and clear to all, outlining the project aims and what is required for success, regardless of length. They are foundational to aligning visual expectations alongside functional ones. It is also a pivotal document to guide your stakeholders in terms of purpose and expectations for your new (or existing) digital solution. 


A digital design brief assists in supporting projects such as website development, intranet implementation, application development or custom software creation. It is important to compile all the required creative components to ensure your new (or enhanced) solution does not deviate from your identity. 

Consequences of Not Using a Digital Design Brief

A digital design brief is a document developed to outline the client’s wants and needs from an aesthetic perspective. It should be used a reference point throughout the project for designers to reference, and developers to consider. 

Without a solid digital design brief, the risk in losing clarity or creating ambiguity is high:

  • Quality control issues: The absence of brand guidelines could lead to variations in consistency, application, and overall quality. It helps to ensure adherence to brand standards or brand identity. 
  • Miscommunication: The absence of a design brief results in unclear expectations. Team members and stakeholders may have different interpretations, leading to misaligned efforts such as typography placement not brand identity (How statements are positioned) or incorrect colour palettes applied when considering UX application (what colour shade is used on hover). 
  • Unclear objectives: Designers may not fully understand what the project aims to achieve, causing them to create solutions that might not align with the actual goals. Digital features and functions may overstep the boundaries or create new ways in how your brand would usually communicate with users (such as call to action buttons/statements). 
  • Scope creep: The absence of boundaries set by a digital design brief can result in scope creep, where additional features or changes are introduced during the project, causing delays and increased costs. 
  • Project delays: Design projects without a clear brief might experience delays due to constant revisions, unclear objectives, and the need for frequent realignments. 

Benefits of Using a Digital Design Brief 

A strong design brief has many benefits that contribute to project success. Key benefits include: 

Saves time and money – a clear design brief will save both time and money, as it will eliminate the design project going out of scope, and the designer making changes without having to, and also eliminates time taken to fix design issues. 

Efficient use of resources – with a clear process, and documents in place, each person on the project understands their role and the room for overlap on who is doing, or directing what, is reduced. Available assets are leveraged, and new ones needed are clarified ahead of time. 

Improved creativity - through a shared vision, understanding of the audience, and providing relevant inspiration, the designer can improve creativity within the project scope. 

Reduced misunderstandings and conflicts – with a clear project vision and alignment of digital assets, the number of misunderstandings and project conflicts are reduced. 

Having a design brief avoids endless rounds of revisions and field frustrating phone calls – and spend excess money and time to get things right. Marketer Mark Hadley, commenting on a lack of briefs, says: “This can leave both parties disappointed: clients may be frustrated they do not get what they want (or expect) and the designer or writer may feel their client is being difficult or indecisive.” 

Design briefs keep both the client and design team aligned. Design briefs can:  

  • Create a more a more open and trusting relationship between designers, developers and clients 
  • Allow insight into the brand and target audience 
  • Increase client involvement within project 
  • Align on a reasonable timeline and budget before the project begins 
  • Set a standard for the quality and deliverable types 
  • Centralise all current and future creative assets and control evolution of such 

What are the Building Blocks of a Design Brief?

To craft an effective design brief, the following elements need to be addressed.  


Project overview and context  

The background context outlines the reasoning behind the project and its overall purpose. 

The project overview is the ‘what’ and ‘why’, i.e.: ‘We need website landing page redesigned to modernise our brand and feature our new brand palette, particularly the orange hues, more heavily.’.  

Questions to consider when addressing this section include:  

  • What is the goal from the output? 
  • What is the design problem that we are aiming to solve?  
  • What assets do we have created that can be leveraged? 
  • What nuances can be noted from a look and feel? 


Goals and objectives  

Without an objective it is impossible to benchmark or measure success. A project summary is crucial to define what the project is about and what it sets out to achieve. There is a distinction between goals and objectives. Goals describe the overall purpose whilst objectives are concrete measures of success in reaching a goal. In this section, you need to identify the problem that this design project is aiming to solve.  

It may be helpful to provide examples of work that inspired this project, or related. A good example could be ‘Here is our new flyer with the branding all applied, can you please refer to this when recreating our homepage?’. 


Target audience and stakeholders  

It is imperative that both the target audience and stakeholders are identified for clarity. Examples of stakeholders include customers, investors, project managers, vendors, shareholders, suppliers, vendors, employees, company board of directors, trade association.  

With target audience, it is important to note the differences of each segment, and how user needs will change based on circumstances. This section needs to include scenarios specifying user’s needs and desires. Key questions to consider would be: 

  • Who is your ideal customer? 
  • What are their goals, habits, demographics? 
  • How will they be using your products or interacting with your  services? 


Timeline and schedules 

Prior to project initiation, clarify the project timeline and assess whether the schedule aligns with all parties who need to be involved (internally and externally). This will help ensure that the right people are spoken to at the relevant stages, and the resources needed are present when they need to be. Questions include: 

  • Are there any internal deadlines? 
  • Who are the people that need to be involved? 
  • Are they assigned to the stages or have a clearly defined role in relation to the project? 


Project deliverables 

Deliverables in any design related task are essential. There are many small pieces that contribute to any design item, so defining the outputs required are essential. These also help give the designer of what is already available for use, versus what needs to be created to reach the desired output. Key questions to consider would be:: 

  • What are the file formats would you like exported? 
  • What artifacts do you expect to be delivered alongside the design itself? 
  • Who is responsible for the delivery of the noted assets? 


The Takeaway

Strong digital design briefs are essential to project success and ensure a smooth process between designer and client. They act as a strong reference point and map guiding the design project.  

If you are looking at starting a design project, get in touch to discover how we can help.  

Let's Be Brief.

Are you ready to take the next step towards the ideal digital strategy for your business? Contact us today to set up a free consultation. 

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Amorette Klotz
Digital Coordinator , Dapth
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