The brand brief template.
The questions we ask before any branding project, in a fill-in template you can print or type into. Get these right and the visuals almost brief themselves.
The brand brief
What you’re getting.
No filler. Here are the parts that do the heavy lifting, every one of them something we use ourselves on real projects.
Strategy & purpose
Who you are, why you exist and what you want to be known for, before a single colour is chosen.
- What you do, in one honest sentence
- The problem you actually solve
- What you’d love a happy customer to say
Audience & positioning
Who it is for, and how you differ in their world, not in a vacuum.
- Your ideal customer’s real situation
- What they are actually buying
- What you don’t want to be mistaken for
Personality & voice
Fill-in scales and prompts to pin down how you should come across.
- Warm / formal, playful / serious scales
- Three or four personality words
- How you want people to feel
Practical & taste
The useful constraints and gut reactions a designer actually needs.
- Where the brand will show up
- Colours and styles you love
- Ones you cannot stand
Three steps. Genuinely.
No course, no login, no faff. This is the whole method.
Print it, or copy and type.
Old-school paper or a duplicated file, either works. Just don’t leave it blank in a folder.
Answer honestly, first instinct.
Rough and true beats neat and vague. Do it before anyone opens a design tool.
Use it as your yardstick.
Check every design decision against it: does this feel like the business we described?
The honest answers.
The things people ask before they click download. No catch, and we mean it.
Yes, completely, no email and no sign-up. Download it, use it, and adapt it for as many projects as you like.
No. It is written in plain English for business owners. Filling it in yourself is genuinely the most valuable step, whether you then design the brand yourself or hire a studio.
Use it as the reference for every visual decision. If you would like a hand turning it into a finished identity, that is exactly what we do, send us your filled-in brief.
More free things.
Same deal on all of them: no email gate, no upsell, take what’s useful.
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Get the spreadsheetThe new-website SEO checklist
Every technical box to tick before and after launch, in the order we tick them on real client sites.
Get the PDFLike the brains of us?
New articles, templates and downloads as we publish them. No spam, no daily emails, just the useful stuff when it lands.