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A design brief is a written explanation of the objectives you wish to achieve from your design. The design brief also covers milestones, possible problems, your design tastes and information such as target audience.
Most importantly of all, the design brief enables you and the designer to discuss any differences in opinions before any work takes place. Agreeing a solid design brief will save time and money further down the line.
This article outlines some of the most important factors to consider when writing your design brief for a new website.
Company Profile
Start your design brief with a short, honest synopsis of your organization or company. Don't take this information for granted, and don't assume that the designer will necessarily know anything about your industry sector.
Tell your designer:
• What you do
• How long you have been established and how many staff you employ
• Do you have a niche market
• How you fit in to your industry sector
Your Goals
Good design can have a huge influence on how successful your company is at achieving its goals. Deciding these goals from the outset and working towards them will ensure success. Working and deciding goals as you go along will only result in a half-baked idea that achieves relatively little by comparison.
For example, do you want to:
• Generate sales?
• Encourage enquiries?
• Gain newsletter subscribers?
• Obtain information from your audience?
• Encourage them to tell a friend?
If your aims and objectives are not this clear, then your design brief has already achieved another purpose... One of most rewarding parts of actually sitting down and writing a design brief is that it helps to clarify your thoughts and can indirectly help to find flaws in what you initially thought was a solid idea.
Your Target Audience
Explain to your designer whether you are looking to encourage customer loyalty, appeal to new customers or both.
Detail any demographic figures about your audience that may be useful to the designer.
These may include:
• Age
• Sex
• Income
• Occupation
• Location
Recognizing your audience and how to target them; that is what design is all about. The design for MTV would not be suitable for CNN.
Your Budget and Time-Scale
It is important to realize that your budget is a feasibility factor, affecting the end product. The more development a design takes, the more it will cost. Again, by ensuring you have clearly defined your audience and goals will help the designer advise you on what is possible with your budget.
Time scale is also an important consideration. If you need a website to coincide with any other marketing, let the designer know the deadline.
Consult with Colleagues
Consult with as many people within your organization as possible before sending the brief. Showing the design brief to lots of different people will highlight remarkable differences in opinion about the operating circumstances and aspirations of your organization.
Resolving any differences in opinion will save considerable time and expense further down the line.
Language
Whilst you should write clearly and concisely, there is no reason why you cannot use emotive language to emphasize what you are trying to say.
Design Examples
Provide examples of design you like and design you do not like. Your designer may have a lot of ideas about what they think is a good or bad design for your organization, but in order to really meet your expectations, they need to listen to your design tastes and ideas as much as you need to listen to their experience.
Include examples of your company’s current marketing materials, even if it is just to show what you do not want the new design to look like.
Try to explain why you like particular designs, whether they are TV ads, websites, or another company’s business card. If you are not sure what you like about it,
try starting with these:
• Colour
• Imagery
• Quantity and quality of text
• Typography
• The atmosphere that particular designs create
If there is any design that generates an atmosphere that you like, such as a particular music video, then tell the designer about it. Even if you are just having business cards printed, there is no reason to only show the designer business cards you like. A good designer will recognize the look and feel of any media and take inspiration from it.
iSo can create whole corporate images for projection of many different mediums. If you are unsure of exactly what design style would suit or if you are having trouble defining your goals, then contact us.
Paul has more website design articles at iso-design. co. uk .
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