Formats›A brief, in seven lines

A brief, in seven lines

A reusable format. Copy it, fill it, use it again — for a student, a colleague, a freelancer, anyone you are asking to make something. Nothing in it is specific to one project.

Download brief-format.md The file you fill in. Plain text — open it in any editor, or hand it to an agent.

What this is for

A brief is what one person hands another when they want something made. Most briefs are long and say almost nothing, because the parts that are hard to write are the parts that get left out — what is fixed, what the maker actually gets to decide, and what you are promising not to ask for later.

Seven lines. A brief you cannot read out loud in a minute is a brief the maker will skim, and a skimmed brief is one you will end up explaining in a meeting anyway.

A brief is not a wish and not a contract. It is the smallest description that lets somebody else start without coming back to you first.

The format

THE ASK         what you want made, one sentence, no adjectives

FOR WHOM        the person who will use it — not the person paying for it
FIXED           what cannot move, and who decided that
FREE            what the maker decides, and you will not overrule
DONE            what somebody outside this looks at to say it is finished
BY WHEN         the date, and what gets dropped if the date is at risk

NOT THIS        what it is not, and what it will not be made to do later

An ask above, a refusal below, and five lines between.

What each line is asking

THE ASK. One sentence, and no adjectives. Engaging, seamless and world-class go in when nobody has decided anything, and they read as though somebody has. If the ask takes two sentences you are describing two things and should write two briefs.

FOR WHOM. The person who will use the thing. This is almost never the person commissioning it, and writing it down is where most briefs quietly discover they were describing the commissioner's taste.

FIXED. What cannot move — the date, the budget, the platform, the one constraint you will not lift. Say who decided each one. A constraint with no owner gets argued with; a constraint with a name attached gets worked within.

FREE. What the maker decides, and you will not overrule. This is the line briefs leave out, and leaving it out is what makes late interference feel like betrayal rather than feedback. If nothing is free, say so — that is a legitimate brief and the maker deserves to know before starting.

DONE. Name somebody, and say what they do. It works well is not an answer; a stranger opens it, finds the address, and leaves is. If you cannot say who checks and what they do, you have not decided what finished means, and you will decide it late and by feel.

BY WHEN. The date, and — the harder half — what gets dropped if the date is at risk. Deciding that now, while nobody is under pressure, is worth more than the date itself.

NOT THIS. What it is not, and what it will not be made to do later. Not a disclaimer. The things it could plausibly grow into, that you are ruling out while you still can.

A worked one

THE ASK         A page that tells a visitor what the studio does.

FOR WHOM        Someone who has been sent the link by a friend and has
                thirty seconds. Not a client, not a peer, not us.
FIXED           Live before the 14th. One page. No stock photography.
                The 14th is the landlord's date, not mine.
FREE            Everything else — structure, length, whether there are
                images at all, whether it scrolls. I will not overrule
                these, including if I dislike the first version.
DONE            Someone who has never heard of us reads it once and can
                say, in their own words, what we make.
BY WHEN         The 14th. If it is at risk, the About section goes and
                the page ships without it.

NOT THIS        Not a portfolio, and it will not later be asked to carry
                case studies, a blog or a contact form.

Note what is not in it: no tone words, no reference sites, no page structure. And note that FIXED names whose date it is. The landlord's, not mine — which tells the maker which constraint is worth arguing with and which is not.

How to use it

  1. Write the seven lines before you talk to anybody. Where a line will not come, leave it blank. The blank is the finding.
  2. Show it to the maker and ask for three questions you genuinely cannot answer from what is written. Not suggestions. If all three land on the same line, that line is the one you have not decided.
  3. Answer the three in writing, each under its own line.
  4. Do not add to it afterwards. If something has to change, replace the line and say which one changed. A brief that grows by accretion stops being readable in a minute and stops being a brief.
  5. 🔴 Keep the NOT THIS line where the maker can see it for the whole project. It is the only part of the brief that protects them from you.

Three ways a brief fails

It describes the commissioner. FOR WHOM says our clients and DONE says we are happy with it. Everything in it is now a matter of taste, and taste arrives late.

It fixes what did not need fixing. Colours, page count, a reference site. Nobody will remember later that these were arbitrary, so nobody will lift them.

It has no NOT THIS. So the thing grows — one more section, one small extra — and every addition is reasonable on its own. The refusal has to be written down at the start, because by the time you need it you will be the one asking.

Prayas Abhinav. Licensed CC BY 4.0 — copy it, change it, build on it, including commercially. Say where it came from, and if you changed it.

Take a copy: specification-format.md. Yours to alter.