There’s only one way to truly design a logo the right way and that is to use what’s known as a project, or creative, brief. This article is going to de-mystify the logo project brief with an in-depth description, tell you when to use a project brief with your clients, spell-out a few different ways to conduct a project brief and end with some sample questions you can use to create your own logo project brief.

What Is a Project Brief?

A project brief is a useful tool that professional logo designers employ to acquire specific bits of information about an upcoming project. In essence, project briefs help designers organize and understand what a client is telling them. In a restaurant, you look at a menu and place an order. When it comes to logo design, clients “place an order” by filling out a project brief. Think of it this way: if you are going to get somewhere you’ve never been before, you’re going to need some good directions and that’s exactly what a project brief provides for logo designers.

There are numerous reasons why a designer should make effective use of a project brief. Using a project brief can save you from some brain-splitting headaches down the road, the chief of which is getting lost in an endless sea of time-sucking revisions. Just like an architect first creates a blueprint before creating a building, a project brief allows designers to collect and distill what a clients wants and needs in order to create a logo design “blueprint” or plan of action.

A project brief is also very helpful from a client’s perspective. It gives them a chance to address important issues they may have otherwise overlooked. Many logo design clients really have no idea what they want to see designed, so a project brief gives them the opportunity to discover which direction they want to take.

When To Use a Design Brief

Should every logo design project start with a creative brief? Absolutely. The only time you may not need to use a project brief is if you are designing a logo for yourself. In that case you’ll already know everything there is to know. For every other instance of logo design, a project brief should be used. If you don’t use one you’re really selling yourself, and your client, short.

At what point during the logo design process should you conduct the briefing? Almost always the project brief happens at the beginning of the project, which makes perfect sense–how can you design something when you have no idea what it should look like? This should happen before anything else. Before sketching, before choosing colors, before choosing a font. The only thing that should come first is meeting the client and getting a deposit to start the project in the first place.

How to Implement Your Brief

A project brief is really a way to interview your client, to extract information. There are a number of effective ways to get this information. The most obvious way is to talk to your client in-person, probably at a meeting. In this case you’d probably ask questions and take notes, either on a computer or on a piece of paper. You may even want to use a voice recorder just to make sure you don’t miss anything.

The in-person meeting option is great, but won’t work for everyone, especially for freelance logo designers who work with clients from all over the world. Freelancers may want to use another method. One of my favorites is to use a web form. It’s the method I usually use when I personally get hired to design a logo. The nice thing about this method is that you receive a completed form in your email which automatically means you have a searchable copy on-file. Great for people who lose things or are disorganized. As a side note, I like to include a check-box on my logo interview web form that asks clients to agree to my terms of service. My form won’t submit unless they have read and agreed to my terms of service. This is great protection that can help you settle any disputes that may arise in the future (depending on your terms of service).

Still other logo designers like to interview their clients via the phone or provide a download in the form of a Word document of PDF. Whatever method you choose to use will depend on your goals. For instance, do you want to spend more personal time with the client or would you rather get the information with as little speaking as possible?

Possible Questions to Include

When it comes to the actual questions to include in your brief, you want to gather as much useful and relevant information as possible. I usually make a note of the clients basic contact information as part of my project brief so I won’t have any problems getting in touch to ask questions as needed.

Here are some sample questions to get your started. You may want to add/subtract from them as you see fit:

- Who is your target audience?
- Who are your closest competitors?
- What type of product or service do you offer?
- What is your unique selling point?
- What is your budget?
- What is your deadline?
- What is the exact wording to be used in the logo?
- What is your companies slogan or tagline?
- Please describe at least 3 logos you like including what you like about them.
- Do you have a typographic preference? (Heavy, light, modern, classic, etc…)
- Are there any specific images or icons you’d like to incorporate into the logo?
- Are there any specific colors you may want to use?
- Are there any specific colors you’d like to avoid?
- Any additional comments?

About the Author
Chris is the co-founder and co-editor of Freelance Review. Chris also co-founded Brandeluxe. In addition to Freelance Review, Chris also runs Design News Source and Daily Design Advice. Follow on Twitter at ( Freelance Review | Brandeluxe | Design News Source ).