How to Brief a Design Team: A Legal Marketer’s Guide to Getting Great Creative Work, Fast

Why Briefs Matter (More Than You Think)

We’ve all seen what happens when a brief goes wrong.

Designers are forced to make assumptions. The messaging isn’t quite right. Someone senior gets involved late in the process. The deadline doesn’t shift, but the workload doubles. Sound familiar?

A clear brief avoids these common pitfalls. It aligns expectations, reduces rework, and ensures the final result reflects not just your brand, but your goals.

For overstretched BD or marketing teams, a good brief improves creative output, saves time, protects budgets, and improves relationships across the board.

What a Great Design Brief Should Include

We’ve worked with hundreds of briefs across the legal sector. There is no strict template, but successful briefs always cover the same foundations:

1. Purpose and context

Why is this project happening? Is it for a new business pitch? A graduate campaign? An internal rollout? A simple explainer can help the designer understand tone, pace, and what matters most.

For example, a brochure for a recruitment campaign has very different expectations than a slide deck for a partner retreat. One might need to inspire and attract, the other to inform and align. Even two pieces that look similar on the surface can need completely different design approaches depending on purpose.

It’s also helpful to share any context surrounding the project:

• Is this part of a wider campaign?
• Is there a sensitive issue it needs to navigate?
• Has something worked or not worked well in the past?
• Is this a response to a specific opportunity or challenge?

The more we know, the better we can design a solution that fits, both visually and strategically. And if you’re not 100% sure on the purpose yourself, we can help define it together. Clarity here saves time, avoids mismatched expectations, and keeps everyone aligned on what “success” looks like.

2. Audience

Who will be reading or viewing this piece? The tone and visual style for a prospective client will differ from that of an internal team announcement. Knowing who you’re speaking to is just as important as knowing what you’re saying.

Design is more than just visuals, it’s about communication. And the way you communicate should shift depending on the audience. A slide deck going to a potential client in a regulated industry needs a different tone, style, and layout than a social post aimed at graduate recruits or an internal update for fee-earners.

In a brief, it helps to go beyond simply naming the audience (e.g. “clients” or “HR team”) and think about their:

• Familiarity with your brand – Is this their first contact with you or are they long-term clients?
• Level of understanding – Are they deeply familiar with the topic, or do they need background context?
• Mindset – Are they busy and skimming, looking to be reassured, expecting to be impressed?

Designers use this kind of insight to tailor hierarchy, visuals, and tone of voice. For example:

• A time-poor decision-maker may benefit from bold headlines, quick visual wins, and stripped-back layouts.
• A younger audience might respond better to interactive or informal visuals with a more relaxed brand tone.
• Internal audiences may appreciate more detail, clarity, and consistency, especially when it reinforces brand identity.

Even just a few lines about the audience’s expectations or pain points can make a big difference to the outcome. It helps us craft design that not only looks good, but lands well.

3. Hierarchy of information

Which messages matter most? What’s secondary? Clear direction helps ensure your design leads with impact.

When everything is important, nothing stands out. One of the most valuable things a brief can include is a sense of priority. What do you want your audience to notice first? What’s the key message or takeaway? And what content is supporting detail rather than headline material?

A strong hierarchy helps the design team build structure and flow. It affects layout, typography, visual cues, and navigation, especially in longer-form pieces like brochures or slide decks. It also avoids the all-too-common issue of cramming too much into a single layout and hoping it sticks.

You don’t need to overthink this, just a few clear notes like:

• “This quote should lead”
• “These three points are core”
• “The rest can sit in a secondary tier or be moved to supporting material”

Designers are great at guiding visual attention. But if we know what you want to emphasise, we can make those moments work even harder whether it’s with scale, colour, placement or pacing.

4. Deliverables

This is where the practical side of the brief comes in. What do you need, and in what format? PowerPoint? LinkedIn visuals? Editable Word doc? Avoid ambiguity upfront to save multiple file exports later.

Is it a PDF? A print-ready file? A fully editable Word document? A LinkedIn carousel? Or all of the above?

It’s incredibly helpful to know early on what the end format needs to be. It can impact the way we design the piece from the outset as well as how we export the final product. For example, a social media graphic will need different image proportions, text limits, and visual impact compared to an internal report or training slide.

If your piece is being used across multiple platforms or formats, let us know upfront. We can design with flexibility in mind, ensuring everything feels cohesive without needing to start from scratch each time.

And if you’re unsure? No problem, we’re happy to suggest formats based on your goals, usage, or where we think the design will shine best.

5. Timelines

When is it needed and by whom? If there are multiple reviewers or sign-offs, building that into the schedule avoids last-minute surprises.

Deadlines are a fact of life in professional services, and we get it sometimes things move fast. But being upfront about timelines helps everyone stay on track.

The most useful briefs are the ones that don’t just say “ASAP,” but clarify:

• When you need the first version
• When feedback will be shared
• Who else needs to review it
• Whether there’s a hard deadline (e.g. for a meeting, pitch, or print run)

This allows us to plan resources, avoid last-minute scrambles, and make sure we’re delivering to your expectations not just the clock.

There’s a common misconception that giving a very early deadline will help speed things up and reduce pressure, but often, the opposite happens. We sometimes find ourselves weeks into a project that was supposedly urgent, only to discover the real deadline is much further off. This false sense of urgency can lead to poor resource allocation, rushed delivery, and an extended amends process that drags on unnecessarily.

When clients are open and realistic about timelines, we can plan properly, allocate the right team, and make sure no time or effort is wasted.

If timelines are tight, we’ll always try to flex but the more visibility we have, the better we can manage everyone’s time and avoid surprises. And for multiple quick turn around documents following specific procedures like our Creative-as-a-Service offering helps make sure you always have a team ready to help.

6. Who approves what

One of the biggest causes of delay in legal marketing projects is unclear ownership. Knowing who signs off on content, brand, and messaging helps everyone plan accordingly.

In legal and professional services, projects often pass through several hands before they’re signed off. That’s understandable, but it can create delays, confusion, and last-minute changes if roles aren’t clearly defined from the start.

Including a short note in your brief about who owns final approval helps the design team know where to direct questions or concerns and whose feedback carries weight when decisions need to be made.

For larger or more complex jobs, it’s helpful to clarify:

• Who signs off on content or copy
• Who owns brand and design consistency
• Who’s the final decision-maker

If those roles aren’t yet defined, we can help you build in buffers and checkpoints that protect the timeline without derailing the process. The goal is to keep projects moving smoothly even when multiple voices are involved.

What If You Don’t Have All the Answers?

You don’t need to have every element pinned down before starting the conversation. A good design partner will help you fill in the gaps and ask the right questions.

At Epigram, we work with marketing and BD teams at every level of clarity, from fully mapped campaign plans to rough ideas in an email. What matters is getting aligned early.

“Can’t the designer just make it look good?”

They can, and they will.
But design is more than decoration.

Your designer is translating your goals into visual communication. The more clarity you provide, the more confidently they can build something that resonates with your audience and reflects your brand.

That said, we know sometimes you’re up against it. You’ll always get creative thinking from our team, even when the brief is more rushed than you’d like.

How Epigram Supports Better Briefs

We’ve designed our workflows to make briefing easier, not harder.

For clients using our Creative-as-a-Service (CaaS) model, we work from structured briefing frameworks that ensure no key detail is missed, without adding layers of admin. These templates are designed to make your life easier and help us deliver high-quality work, faster.

For one-off projects, we’ll guide you through the process step by step. We’re used to asking the right questions and shaping clarity out of complexity.

And if something changes midway through the brief? No problem. We’re flexible, responsive, and committed to getting it right.

Final Thoughts: The Brief Is a Shared Starting Point

Briefing isn’t about handing something over and stepping away. It’s the beginning of a creative collaboration and when done well, it makes everything that follows smoother and stronger.

Great design doesn’t just come from great designers. It comes from clear intent, shared understanding, and smart collaboration. The brief is where that begins.

Are you ready to improve your branding and stand out against the competition?
Get in touch today!