creative brief presentation template

How to Write a Creative Brief in 11 Simple Steps [Examples + Templates]

Published: June 11, 2024

The first step in any successful project is drawing up a game plan with a clear objective. It's one of the reasons marketers love creative briefs.

A creative brief acts as a roadmap that takes a project from ideation to completion. It ensures the scope, timeline, key stakeholders, and purpose of the project are communicated clearly.

The creative brief is the single source of truth for everyone working on a project. If questions come up or tasks become unclear, the creative brief will steer things in the right direction.

What is a creative brief?

A creative brief is a short document that sums up marketing, advertising, or design project mission, goals, challenges, demographics, messaging, and other key details. It's often created by a consultant or a creative project manager. The goal of a brief is to achieve stakeholder alignment on a project before it begins.

The Purpose of a Creative Brief

Whether you’re a consultant pitching a creative brief to a client, or a project manager presenting a brief to your team, start by speaking with the project stakeholders.

These discussions will help you understand the company's mission, project goals, and challenges your team faces. Then, you’ll have enough information to write a compelling brief that focuses on what’s really important to your company or client.

The idea of a creative brief sounds simple, but it can be hard to wrap a lot of important details into just a few pages. Therefore, a creative brief is typically comprised of eight sections that can fit on one to two pages.

Free Creative Brief Templates

Three customizable templates designed to serve as the blueprint for your next campaign.

• Campaign brief template.
• Video brief template.
• Client brief template.

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How a Creative Brief Works

Creative briefs are pretty standard documents within just about every marketing, advertising, or design team.

For smaller projects that live in-house (like designs, templates, marketing assets, etc.) the brief is owned by the team who will be executing on the information in the brief.

This is usually the creative team, but this team can fall within the brand department or even live within marketing.

For more advanced, long-term projects that involve an agency, the creative brief is owned by the creative team or agency who will be executing the work.

This is because they'll work closely with the stakeholders on the project to understand what is needed, plus they'll bring their own expertise and competitive research to the brief that the internal team may not have access to.

These types of creative briefs aren't rare, but they are created infrequently due to the nature of the projects they support. So for this post, we'll focus mostly on the day-to-day creative briefs that you're likely to use often. Here's how they work.

Creative Brief Outline

• Project Name
• Company Background
• Project Objective
• Target Audience
• Competitors
• Key Message
• Key Consumer Benefit
• Call to Action
• Distribution

Step 1. The teams who need assistance from the creative team will retrieve the creative brief template from a repository like OneDrive, Google Drive, or an online form.

Step 2. The team that is requesting the project will complete the brief according to their team's needs and goals. The completion of the creative brief starts with the team requesting the project so that they can explain their vision and goals clearly to the creative team.

Step 3. From there, the brief is sent back to the creative team to review. They'll be looking for timelines, resources, and budget requirements.

Step 4. If they have any questions, they'll go back to the team who wrote the brief and finalize the details.

Step 5. After that, the project is kicked off, sometimes with the help of a project manager, who will check-in with stakeholders on the project and keep everything on schedule, within scope, and within budget.

Step 6. Once the project is complete, both teams will review the deliverables against the creative brief to ensure everything is completed correctly.

The format of every company's creative brief might vary slightly to suit the needs of the project or client. Below is a simple outline that will be the foundation of your creative brief.

It includes the most important steps in the creative process and information that'll be relevant to stakeholders involved in the project.

Once you’re fully informed and ready to write, use the following steps to draft yours. To make it even easier, I've included a fill-in-the-blank template in the last step.

How to Write a Creative Brief

• Decide on a name for the project.
• Write about the brand and summarize the project’s background.
• Highlight the project objective.
• Describe the target audience.
• Interpret the competitive landscape.
• Prepare the key message.
• Choose the key consumer benefit.
• Select an attitude.
• Determine the best call to action.
• Draft the distribution plan.
• Share the creative brief with stakeholders.

1. Decide on a name for the project.

The first step in developing a creative brief is deciding on a project name. This might sound simple, but it's one of the most critical components of a creative brief.

If you're building a campaign around a brand new product or service, the campaign name will be the first time many members of your team will be introduced to it.

Referring to the campaign (and therefore product or service) by the correct name prevents the game of telephone from happening. Without a specific and clear campaign name, people will make up their own terminology which can alter the intent of the campaign .

To create a project or campaign name for your creative brief, keep it creative and brief. A few words or a short sentence should work just fine.

If you're launching a product, identify what the call to action will be for the target audience, then center the name around that. Here are a few examples of fictional campaign names:

• The Search for Adventure Campaign- A scavenger hunt-themed amusement park.
• The Don't Forget Your Memories Campaign - A photo frame company.
• The "What's hotter than Pepperco hot sauce?" Campaign - A hot sauce brand.

2. Write about the brand and summarize the project’s background.

Another simple, yet essential section is the company background. If you work in an agency setting, this is non-negotiable as your team is likely handling several client campaigns at once.

However, if you're developing a creative brief for an in-house project, you'll still want to include this part. New hires on your team, freelancers, and vendors will appreciate the background that your internal team is already privy to.

The company background shouldn't be a general history of the company or a copied and pasted paragraph from the about page. Instead, tailor this to the project at hand.

Set the scene with one or two sentences that sum up the brand’s mission. Follow this with a few sentences that give background on the brand and what led to the development of the project.

While some creatives have put this information all together in a quick paragraph, others separate it with headers like “Brand Statement” and “Background.”

Here are some questions to consider when writing a company background for your creative brief:

• Has the company launched a campaign like this before?
• Why is the company choosing to launch this campaign right now?
• What's happening in the market and how will this campaign respond to it?

3. Highlight the project objective.

Here is where the creative brief gets more specific. The project objective should briefly explain the purpose of the project, the timeline, and the audience it'll target. This can be done in a sentence or two, but you can get creative and stylize it in sections.

This part of the creative brief will be helpful in emphasizing why the project needs to happen. The goal aspects will help you and your team align on the project’s expectations.

If the company or client hasn’t identified any major challenges, you can focus this section on goals and objectives. Explain what a successful project looks like and how it will benefit the company.

Pro Tip: Writing a project objective is very similar to writing a goal, so take a look at this blog post for more detail on goal and objective writing.

Here’s an example of a sample creative brief for PayPal that offers separate sections for “The Problem” and “The Goal”:

4. Describe the target audience.

Next, it's time to define the target audience for the project. This is the segment of your market that will directly benefit from the product or service being launched.

You can take audience segmentation a step further by identifying a primary and secondary audience. Doing so will give your team more freedom to explore creative ideas that might resonate with one group more than the other.

When crafting the target audience section, be sure to include the following:

• Demographics - Simple demographic information gives your team insight into exactly who the audience is. This includes data points like age, income, education, ethnicity, and occupation.
• Behaviors - Buying behaviors, trends, and other customer history make up the target audience behaviors. These provide important context to the creative brief because they explain where the customer is in their buyer journey.
• Psychographics - This is how the audience thinks and feels about your brand and the product or service you sell, in general.
• Geographics - Digital, physical, and hybrid campaigns will benefit from having geographics stated explicitly in the creative brief so that media buyers can price ad slots in each market.

Pro Tip: Your creative brief shouldn't be too long, and this section can take up quite a bit of space. To make this section more digestible, consider using buyer personas .

Here’s how the sample brief for PayPal noted above thoughtfully explains a new product’s target audience:

5. Interpret the competitive landscape.

Knowing what your competitors are doing is advantageous for the whole team.

You can use competitive data to come up with ideas that haven’t been tried yet, learn from their failed projects, or build a project that improves on a strategy they’ve used in the past.

Include a quick list of competitors with similar product or service offerings.

Briefly list a few things your company has in common with them, how your brand has differentiated itself already, and a few areas where this project can help you get ahead.Get Your Free Templates

6. Prepare the key message.

The key message can be the most difficult part of the creative brief to develop because just about every stakeholder will have a different opinion of what it should be.

To get buy-in faster, try this simple trick. Ask yourself "We're launching this project, so what?" The "so what?" is your key message. It explains why your target audience should stop what they're doing and pay attention to your campaign.

The key message includes the pain point, what the audience's experience might be like without the pain point, and the benefit they'll receive as a result of your company's solution.

This framework places the customer in the spotlight of the campaign. Instead of telling them what this product or service could do for them, it positions them as the main character in the journey from problem to solution.

7. Choose the key consumer benefit.

If you're launching a new product, there are likely several features and benefits that the target audience will experience when they decide to purchase it. However, it's very difficult to structure a campaign around several different features.

That's why marketers and creatives use something called a key consumer benefit (KCB) in the creative brief to keep everyone aligned on the primary benefit being communicated.

To choose the right KCB, you'll want to get input from the project stakeholders and rely on consumer data to guide the decision.

Pro Tip: Your KCB won't always be the fanciest feature of your product. The benefit that solves the biggest problem for your audience is a great choice for the KCB.

8. Select an attitude.

The tone and voice of your campaign create the overall attitude and that should be consistent throughout every creative element that's being developed.

Identifying a few adjectives that describe the attitude of the campaign can help copywriters draft copy that sends the correct message within the right context.

Graphic designers can use colors and techniques to portray the tone and voice as well.

In this section of the brief, you should also note the appropriate voice for your audience. While some audiences, like those in the business world, prefer more formal language, others might engage more with a casual, relatable tone.

To substantiate your decision to choose a particular brand voice and tone, you could write something like, “Our brand voice is a casual and carefree tone because it speaks to younger Gen-Z audiences.”

Pro tip: Use a thesaurus to find specific words that evoke nuanced emotions and attitudes for a hyper-targeted campaign.

9. Determine the best call to action.

Finally, your audience needs something to do once they see your campaign. The good thing about CTAs is that they don't have to be physical actions.

A CTA could have a goal to change thoughts and perceptions about your brand which doesn't require the audience to do anything at all.

Your creative brief might include several different CTAs, especially if you have a primary and secondary target audience. But it's a good idea to have one primary CTA that drives the project objective we talked about earlier.

10. Draft the distribution plan.

When the project is done, you’ll need to make sure your audience actually sees it. List a few channels or platforms on which you plan to announce the launch, as well as any promotional content you plan to create.

When drafting this section, think about your target audience. Don’t waste time on a promotional strategy that they won’t see.

For example, if you’re promoting a project to Gen-Z, you’ll want to invest in social media rather than billboards or newspaper ads.

11. Share the creative brief with stakeholders.

Once you’ve drafted a creative brief, share it with the team you’ll be working with. You’ll also want to circulate it around the company via Slack, email, or presentations.

If you’re a consultant working outside of a client’s company, encourage your clients to share the brief internally.

As you or your clients spread awareness, you should be open to answering questions or taking feedback from colleagues in case they have any great ideas.

This strategy will improve team alignment , increase support of the project, and ensure that all of your colleagues are on the same page.

Follow Along with HubSpot's Free Creative Brief Templates

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Creative Brief Templates

Having trouble with the flow and organization of your brief? Here are simple templates that could help. Copy and paste into a document and fill in the blanks. You can also add to the templates or adjust them as needed for your project.

Download More Creative Brief Templates

[Inset company or client logo at the top along with the project name.]

COMPANY BACKGROUND:

For ___ years, ______ [Brand Name] has been serving customers in the ____________ [group/job field/geographical area] with ____________________ [product or service].

[Brand Name] has made achievements including __________,__________, and ___________. We have also launched marketing campaigns that have touched on ____________,________, and ____________. With the launch of _________ [project name] they hope to ___________.

PROJECT OBJECTIVE:

With this project, the company aims to solve problems related to ____________________, while also expanding on ___________ and improving on _____________.

TARGET AUDIENCE:

Our target audience is ____ [gender], in the age range of _ and _, and live areas like ____, _____, and ______. They enjoy _____, dislike ______, and might work in fields like _____, _____, and _____. They want more of ________ and their daily pain points include ________.

Their favorite products might include _______ and ______. They learn about these products through channels including ________, _________, and _______.

COMPETITORS:

Our three biggest competitors [are/will be] ________, ________, and _______. These competitors offer _____, ______, and ______. We are ahead of them in _____ and ______, but we are behind when it comes to product offerings like __________ and _________.

KEY MESSAGE:

The target audience is experiencing __________ [pain point], but with our newest project ___________, they'll get to experience _________ [new experience without the pain point]. That's what makes ______ [solution] an unrivaled solution within the market.

KEY CONSUMER BENEFIT:

________ [feature] is the best way for our target audience to experience _____ [benefit].

[Include three to five adjectives that describe the tone and voice of the project.]

CALL TO ACTION:

When the target audience sees our campaign, they will [feel/think/do] _________.

DISTRIBUTION:

We will promote the launch on platforms and channels that our demographic regularly engages with. These will include ________, ________, and _______.

We will also release content including _______, _______, and ________ to gain attention from our audience and inform them of the project.

Below are a few messages we will use:

• _________________________________________________.

Here are more templates to consider:

1. Simple Campaign Creative Brief

2. video creative brief, 3. simple client creative brief, types of creative briefs.

Creative briefs serve several purposes in the communications field. Marketers, designers, and advertisers use them differently. Depending on your role, your team, and the project you're working on, one might be more effective than the other. Below are some of the most common types of creative briefs used across industries today plus examples of what they might look like.

1. Marketing Creative Briefs

A marketing creative brief is most commonly used to bring campaigns to market. This type of creative brief can be used for both new and existing campaigns. Broad business goals and strategies to accomplish them are usually included in this type of creative brief. It's also not uncommon to see revenue goals and a budget included in a marketing creative brief.

Simple Marketing Creative Brief Example

2. Product Design Creative Briefs

Product design creative briefs outline the go-to-market strategy for a new product or feature launch. Product marketers are responsible for developing this type of brief. Developed in conjunction with the product manager, the product design creative brief will describe the features and benefits of the product and how the audience will benefit from them. Unique features of this type of creative brief include product documentation and product descriptions.

Product Design Creative Brief Example

3. Advertising Agency Creative Briefs

Advertising agencies develop creative briefs often for the various clients they serve. These briefs are concise and include the client's brand guidelines as well as the specific project guidelines. A budget may also be included in the brief so that all teams can make wise decisions about the tactics they recommend for the client. An account manager or supervisor develops the creative brief and shares it with client stakeholders before the agency begins working on the project.

Advertising Agency Creative Brief Example

Creative Brief Examples

1. creative request template.

For the day-to-day management of creative projects, using a creative request template in Asana acts as a dynamic take on a traditionally static creative brief. With a few tweaks to suit your business's needs, this template flows through each stage of the project while specifying tasks, deliverables, and key points that need to be included in the project. Moreover, Asana provides several types of views that make this template easy to look at from a calendar view, list view, board view, and timeline view so you'll always know the progress of your project in relation to the creative brief.

When to Use This Creative Brief:

This creative brief example is great for marketing, brand, creative, and design teams who handle a large backlog of projects with stakeholders on many different teams. Use this brief for both ad-hoc and regularly occurring projects.

2. Creative Brief Presentation Template

This creative brief example was designed by TemplateForest. It's a visual-forward example of a brief that works well for long-term projects like building a business or refreshing a brand. This longer brief includes a variety of information from internal brand insights to an external competitive analysis.

Use this creative brief when you're partnering with a creative agency on bigger projects. They can use this layout to inspire a creative brief that fits the needs of your business.

3. Red Bull

Image source

This creative brief is straightforward and simple. The only eye-catching visual is the use of the brand's logo. However, all the necessary information is included. 

When to Use this Creative Brief

Use this kind of brief when you want a straightforward document detailing your brand's longterm creative projects.

4. Quaker 

This Creative Brief by Quaker lays out the brand's problem, plan, and guidelines and includes visually appealing graphics to drive home the brief's point. 

A brief like the one above is most useful if your organization is embarking on a long-term project or if there's a lot of information and data that needs to be conveyed in an understandable manner.

5. Graphic Design Creative Template 

This template is designed to allow graphic designers to gather important information from clients so that they designer can create a product that is aligned with the client's vision.

When to Use this Creative Brief 

Briefs like this work best when working with clients on detailed projects. 

6. Nike Creative Brief

This creative brief example for Nike features all the crucial information a brief should include while utilizing the Nike logo and symbols to create visual interest. 

A brief like this serves the same purpose as the Quaker brief. If you have a lot information to convey, including symbols and interesting colors will help the information stick out and remain top of mind. 

Streamline Projects with a Creative Brief

Scope creep happens to the best of us. Projects get bigger, stakeholders are added, and the objective of the project seems to morph as time goes on.

Streamline your next product launch or marketing and advertising campaign with a creative brief. As a result, you'll find that your team is more aligned with the project's goals.

We've even provided free creative brief templates to get you started — download them below.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in July 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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The complete guide to writing creative briefs

Just like any other task, creative work deserves a clear plan and measurable goals before work begins. That’s where a creative brief comes in. Developing a creative brief allows you to take a proactive approach and outline requirements while planning out your creative work. Among other important elements, your creative brief is your opportunity to define the scope, deadlines, and deliverables specific to the creative part of your project.

Overall, a creative brief helps keep everyone on the same page—reducing feelings of frustration or confusion—while making sure no part of the design process is bottlenecked.

What is a creative brief?

A creative brief is used to define any relevant creative requirements, including messaging, audience, and outlining how success will be measured. Once the brief is created, plan to host a  kickoff meeting  to discuss conflicts or restrictions. That way, you have time to revise and update your creative brief before the work begins.

Remember this—creative briefs aren’t meant to be written and then left stagnant. Before your work begins, your creative brief should be an ever-evolving document that may change as the creative requirements continue to be scoped or tweaked. However, by the time the work starts, your creative brief should be a  clear plan  and have specific goals that your design, content, and creative teams can refer back to throughout the process, making sure everyone is aligned and making the right decisions.

Essential elements of a creative brief

Understanding what a creative brief is and why you need one is important. However, knowing what to actually put in one will save you significant time and reduce back and forths with your creative team. You can avoid having to circle back to questions and conflicts down the road by putting the appropriate information in your creative brief up front.

Take a look at these “must-haves” for every creative brief. Whether you’re planning a marketing campaign, writing a creative brief for an advertising agency, or preparing a creative brief for your internal team, these nine steps will help you clarify the key information your team needs for success. Keep in mind that your brief may contain more elements—and you can certainly add them as they relate to your work—but the criteria mentioned below should be part of nearly every creative brief.

Title and description

Goals and objectives, messaging and tone, assets and deliverables.

Stakeholders

Distribution process

First, give your creative brief a title. Provide a short description of the creative work so team members understand why they are a part of it. Let them know the intention of the creative work.

Title:  Advertising campaign for new product launch

Description:  As we prepare to launch Apollo Enterprises newest product, we’ll be putting together a series of advertisements to introduce it to the market.

Why are you working on this? At this point in your creative brief, you want to define the specific business need and what the work will accomplish. What does success look like for this particular body of work? As you’re writing down your goals, make sure they are measurable. At the end of the project, you’ll want to look back on them and clearly know if you’ve met your objectives.

Goals and objectives:  Reach 500,000 potential customers via paid search over a one-month period and add 5,000 new subscribers to our email list.

Outlining your target audience will help better tailor your creative to them. Look for specific insights, as those become your gems of valuable information. Get clear on who will be consuming your deliverable (video, ad, etc.). Try your best to define what that person looks like by outlining demographics such as age, gender, income level, marital status, or education level.

Also note what your audience values, along with their interests, wants, and needs. State if you’re trying to reach current customers or potential ones. Answering as many questions as possible about what your audience looks like will help you and your team along the way.

Audience:  Men, 30-65, mid-high income, at least a high school diploma. They value time outdoors, working with their hands, tools, and gadgets. They’re not current Apollo Enterprises’ customers.

Now that you know who your audience is, you need to clearly establish what messaging you want to put in front of them. Also, when your target market receives that message, what should they think, feel, want, and do? Are you asking them to take an action?

If you already have brand guidelines be sure to include them in your creative brief, or direct stakeholders on where to find them. Following brand guidelines ensures the tone and voice of your messaging matches that of your overall brand, and keeps your messaging consistent across marketing initiatives.

If you don’t have established brand guidelines, work with the right team members to put together some information about the tone and voice that this particular creative work should follow. Think of your message as a person. It should have a voice (a personality) and a tone (a mood or attitude).

Messaging and tone:  We want to empower our audience to be creators and use Apollo Enterprises’ new product as part of their most valued suite of tools. We should celebrate the target audience for working with their hands and make them feel proud of their creations.

Since your team’s work will produce some sort of creative asset (or many), this part of your brief should describe what those assets and deliverables are. For example, if you’re creating an advertisement, the final deliverable would be the actual ad. Make sure you specify asset requirements such as dimensions, number of versions, and design elements.

Assets and deliverables:  Three different advertisements, each with a different tagline and image (one version for each of the following sizes: 250x250, 728x90, 120x600).

Creative work usually requires cross-functional  team collaboration . Marketing and design are almost always involved, and oftentimes other departments will also play a part. This means several individuals from different teams working together on the same desired outcome.

This is why it’s so important to identify all important stakeholders upfront. Each team member should know who is involved and what they’re responsible for. You’ll save yourself a lot of time fielding questions down the line if you add this to your creative brief.

Stakeholders:

Creative team: Larry (ad copy), Emma (ad design)

Marketing team: Hannah (team lead), Caleb (email marketing setup for campaign), Terry (ad distribution)

Product team: Zach (Product Manager)

Establishing your budget from the start will help you actually stay in line financially and guide your decision-making. Be sure you write down actual numbers and identify costs where you can. Conducting some quick research ahead of time will help. Are there ways you can cut some costs? Giving yourself some time to play with the numbers before you even begin the work will keep you in good graces with your boss!

Budget:  The overall budget is $8,000 with $5,000 going to ad spend, $1,500 to design, and $1,500 to copywriting.

Establishing a  timeline for your work  early on will keep you and your team on track. Decide on a start date and end date, and then fill in as many important dates as you can in between. Knowing the important deadlines from the beginning gives all stakeholders an idea of how long their part of the work will take. They can plan accordingly and let you know of any conflicts. Be as specific as you can with dates and deadlines, and keep in mind that adjustments may need to be made as the work progresses.

Kickoff meeting: May 5

Final creative brief due: May 10

Ad copy due: May 30

Ad designs due: June 10

Ad buy plans due: June 15

Ads are live: July 1 - July 31

Measure ad success: Ongoing

Wrap-up: August 15

Identifying how your media assets will actually get to your audience is a part of your creative brief that can’t be skipped. All the hard work you put into every other step of your creative process culminates with an effective distribution strategy. In other words, how will you communicate your message? Social media, email, blog posts, and paid advertisements are just a few ways to distribute your media.

Distribution process:  Google Adwords platform to deploy ads.

Creative brief example

Seeing examples of what great creative briefs actually look like can help you formulate your own. Check out this stellar example and pay close attention to the details. You can tell that the project manager took time and thought to develop this creative brief, and help their team work together smoothly.

Creative brief template

Get started with this creative brief template to outline your campaign goals, creative deliverables, due date, marketing strategy, and more.

Title and description:

A clear name that your stakeholders can easily identify, and a short summary that conveys the intention of your creative brief.

Goals and objectives:

Define the metrics of success for your creative brief.

Who are you targeting in your campaign and what are their values, interests, and needs? This section should include any relevant demographics.

Messaging and tone:

What type of tone are you trying to strike? How do you want your audience to feel when they see your creative assets?

Assets and deliverables:

Asset and deliverable 1

Asset and deliverable 2

Asset and deliverable 3

Stakeholder 1

Stakeholder 2

Stakeholder 3

What is your overall budget? Are there any specific details to how the budget should be spent?

Date:  Description

Date: Description

Distribution process:

Specify how you will reach your audience once your assets and deliverables are ready.

Using a creative brief when working with agencies

Sometimes internal stakeholders aren’t the only people you’ll be collaborating with on creative work. Companies may choose to hire an agency to help. If you find yourself  working with an agency , here’s how you can use a creative brief to make the most out of the partnership.

Make your creative brief a starting point

When you deliver the creative brief to your agency contacts, take the opportunity to discuss your goals with them and refine the creative brief if necessary. Ask for their input. They are there to help and getting their buy-in will make every part of the overall process easier. Allow your agency partners to educate you on what will work and what won’t.

Create a robust final version of your creative brief

The more valuable information you put it in, the less questions will come your way later. And, remember, while the agency is a partner of yours, they are working with other companies as well. Giving them as much information as you can will make you and your creative brief stick out (in a good way). For example, you’ll want to include any applicable style guides, tone of voice recommendations, relevant internal messaging information, and any brand guidelines the agency should keep in mind while working.

Be open to change

Creative work moves quickly, and some project leaders make the mistake of thinking their creative brief has to be rigid in order to support fast-moving teams. In reality it’s a living document. Until you start executing on the work, it should always be open to conversations and edits.

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Write your best creative brief

You’re feeling good, right? Hopefully developing your own creative brief doesn’t seem so daunting after all and you’re ready to get moving on building your next one. After you’ve written your creative brief, manage the next steps in your creative process in a work management tool, like  Asana . Not only will it help keep you organized—it will actually help you run the show.

Build a creative brief that makes your life (and those of your stakeholders) easier to execute your creative work successfully.

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Guide: How to Write a Creative Brief (With Examples)

Learn how to write a creative brief and use creative brief templates to help make the crafting of your own easier.

Table of Contents

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If you work in the design industry—or really, any creative field that involves direct client interaction—a creative brief can be a valuable tool that ensures you deliver an exceptional product every time. A creative brief outlines a client’s vision for a project, keeping you and the client on the same page. Below, learn how to create a creative brief, when to use one, and how it can help you exceed client expectations. 

A creative brief is a short, one- to two-page document that serves as the blueprint for a creative project. It documents the client’s vision and ideas for the project and provides the designer with set parameters and guidelines for the finished product. It typically includes elements such as the project’s purpose, goals, intended audience, messaging guidelines, and deliverables. 

Why Are Creative Briefs Important and When Would You Use One? 

The creative brief gets every stakeholder involved in the project on the same page. Based on the brief, everyone should understand what the project includes, the timeline of the project, and the vision for the deliverables. That helps eliminate problems like scope creep (continuous changes to a project’s scope or requirements) and helps ensure that everyone is satisfied with the end result. 

Creative briefs are beneficial in many scenarios, but are particularly helpful for large, involved, design-heavy, or highly conceptual work (e.g., logo design, branding, or website design ). Without a creative brief in these situations, you may not know where to start or feel confident that you truly understand the client’s vision. For smaller or more defined projects—like a single email or an ad graphic—it may not be worth spending the time to craft a creative brief. 

Get Organized and Stop Scope Creep

Project Management for Designers

Creative briefs can differ based on each unique project and your line of work—design versus copywriting versus UX, and so on. To see how these documents can vary, check out a few creative brief examples. 

Hush Puppies

In just one page, this fictional creative brief for the shoe brand Hush Puppies outlines the requirements for a brand awareness campaign . It identifies the target audience, the main message, the unique benefits of the shoes, and the precise design elements that will be delivered. 

Quaker Oats

A less traditional take on a creative brief, this document outlines a campaign to help Quaker Oats increase sales. This brief heavily relies on statistics to define the problem that the client wants to solve: enticing busy people to slow down and enjoy Quaker Oats. 

Simple and concise, this creative brief expertly defines the exact deliverables for the project: a logo, stationery, and 30-second motion trailer for the company. It’s clear, simple, and easy to skim, while still including all of the necessary information. 

While a creative brief may sound simple—it’s just a one-page document, after all—compressing the entire vision for a project in just a page or two can be challenging. Here’s a guide to help you craft an effective creative brief. 

Step 1: Determine the Sections You Want in Your Brief 

Creative briefs exist to make your job easier, so you ultimately get to decide what to include in your document. This tutorial focuses on the following section:

• Target audience

However, you have creative control to add or remove sections. The important part of this step is determining what information will be most helpful to you. 

Step 2: Develop the Background and Objective

First, define the client and their current situation in one to three sentences. Are they opening a new store? Launching a new product? It doesn’t need to be an in-depth history of the client, but rather, a brief look at who they are and what they are doing right now. 

Then, move on to the objective: What is the client trying to accomplish? While this sounds straightforward, take the time to think beyond the deliverable to define the client’s why . For example, a client may ask you to create a new logo —but there’s more to it. Maybe the client wants to connect with a different audience or develop a more modern look and feel for their brand. That is the true objective and the goal you should keep in mind as you move the project forward. 

Step 3: Hone In on Your Target Audience 

To create an effective design or deliverable, you have to understand who you’re talking to. Defining the audience is a critical piece of most creative briefs. In this section, get specific about the client’s ideal customers. You don’t have to include every detail about the audience here; instead, focus on the most compelling details that will have an impact on your design or creative process. For example, you may want to include details about the audience’s shopping behaviors, like their ideal price point or other brands they regularly purchase, but omit irrelevant data like their shoe size or eating habits. 

If your client has multiple audiences, make sure to define each and rank them in order of importance. 

Step 4: Define Your Message 

Now, take what you know about the client and their goals and distill it into the one big idea that the client wants to convey through this project. Make sure the message isn’t just a description of what the client does (e.g., “Company X is a pediatric healthcare provider”), but that it includes what makes the company unique within the industry (e.g., “Company X improves the quality of life for children and their families by delivering timely, affordable pediatric care”).  

While you get to be a little more creative in this section, it’s still important to keep it short and to-the-point—ideally just a sentence or two. 

Step 5: Establish the Tone 

Tone is a critical element to establish for any type of creative project, from graphic design to copywriting. In this section, generate a list of adjectives that describes how the client wants to be perceived—e.g., feminine, industrial, nostalgic, or vibrant. Together, these words define the overall personality that the client wants to project. Aim to narrow this down to five or fewer words, and refer back to this section often to make sure your work aligns with those traits. 

Step 6: Solidify the Means

This section defines the project deliverables. Don’t overthink this; it should be straightforward. Are you designing a logo? Writing a series of three emails for a marketing campaign? Producing an introductory video for the company website ? You simply need to establish exactly what you will produce and deliver to the client by the end of the project. 

Step 7: Edit, Edit, Edit 

Once you’ve completed all the sections of your creative brief, take another pass through it. The goal is to keep it as simple as possible, and at least the first few times you write a creative brief, you will probably include far too much information and extraneous details. 

Look through each section and ask yourself:

• Is it clear?
• Does it address the primary objective of the section? 
• Is it as simple and straightforward as possible?

Ultimately, remember that you and the client will be held to this document throughout the project, so it should be understandable, feasible, and functional. 

Don't take our word for it. Learn writing tips from the award-winning author behind <em>Hunger</em>, Roxane Gay.

Video Creative Brief

This video creative brief template from Studio Binder includes the basic elements explained above, along with some video-specific components, like the “visuals” section. This portion of the brief serves as a mood board, allowing you and the client to hone in on the types of imagery you envision for a video. 

Campaign Creative Brief

A campaign brief differs from other types of creative briefs in that it often has to encompass multiple deliverables. A campaign might, for instance, include a few videos, a series of social media posts, and other promotional graphics. This campaign creative brief from HubSpot covers multiple deliverables and aims to hone in on the overall campaign concept and unified theme for all of those deliverables. 

Design Creative Brief 

Design briefs focus a bit more on the visual elements of a deliverable. The first page of this template from Smartsheet is similar to the previous creative brief templates, but the other pages of the template cover design preferences for imagery, photography, and multimedia. 

Taking the time to craft a creative brief is beneficial for everyone involved in the project. With a better understanding of the client’s vision and goals, you can create a deliverable that exceeds expectations—leaving you and your client happy every time. 

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Design a Brand Identity: Write an Airtight Creative Brief

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Originally published August 10, 2018.  Updated May 21, 2024

Are you ready to finally understand what makes up an awesome creative brief and how to create your own?

In this post, we'll cover:

• Exactly what a creative brief is (and what it is not)
• Great examples of creative briefs
• Our step-by-step process for writing a creative brief

The creative brief is the foundation of any successful creative campaign . It outlines the client’s vision and ensures that everyone is on the same page. So let's get started!

Communication - including the creative brief- is the cornerstone of success for any marketing campaign. And yes, it's more important than creativity. 

As Will Burns of Ideasicle says, the creative brief is the “most sacred of all sacred ad documents.”

Everything stems from the creative brief, from the choice of font in a print ad to the overall theme of the campaign.

CREATIVE BRIEFS, EXPLAINED IN DETAIL

The creative brief is the foundation of a creative campaign. Despite its importance, it is poorly understood, mostly because of its open-ended nature.

This section will help you understand creative briefs and their purpose better.

What is a Creative Brief?

A creative brief is a short 1-2 page document outlining the strategy for a creative project.

Think of it as a map that guides its target audience—the creative team—on how to best achieve the campaign’s stated goals.

The account manager usually creates the creative brief in close consultation with the client.

It interprets the client’s ideas and vision for the brand and the product.

Since this brief is usually created by and for the agency, it is open-ended in nature. You can and should include anything and everything that will help the creative team understand the brand and product better.

Most creative briefs include the following:

• A short brand statement.
• A brief overview of the campaign’s background and objectives .
• Key challenges that the campaign aims to resolve.
• Target audience for the campaign.
• Chief competitors.
• A primary message describing the brand’s values and market positioning.
• Communication channels on which the campaign will run.

For example, here’s a creative brief for Gray’s Cookies :

Essentially, the creative brief describes the “what” of the project (i.e., its objectives) and “how” to achieve them (i.e., the creative approach).

Why Do You Need a Creative Brief?

There is a long list of reasons to create a creative brief.

The most important reason is also the simplest: it is standard agency practice.

Your clients will expect a creative brief before they sign off on a project. And your creative team will expect it before they can start working.

For better or for worse, you can’t start a campaign without it.

But there are other reasons to create a creative brief:

• Ensure that all creative messages are on-brand.
• Give the creative team a broad vision of the brand, the business, and the product.
• Offer inspiration and give your team a starting point to brainstorm ideas.
• Give third-party contributors a quick understanding of the brand and its background.
• Reduce client-creative conflict by ensuring they're on the same page
• Align the client's budget and expectations with your creative media strategy

Who Creates the Creative Brief?

Nominally, the person responsible for managing the client relationship makes the creative brief. Usually, this is the account manager or the project manager.

This person works closely with the client to understand their requirements, their current situation, and the desired future outcomes.

Actually, putting together the brief, however, isn’t a one-person job. You usually need input from a range of people, such as:

• Creative team: analyze whether the client’s vision is viable and brainstorm creative ideas.
• Marketing team: gather customer data, analyze competitors, and develop a viable media strategy.
• Accounts team: to analyze budgets .

Who is the Creative Brief Made for?

It might surprise you that the creative brief's end-user isn’t the client.

Rather, it’s the creative team.

While you’ll certainly need the client’s approval on the brief to get the go-ahead, your creative team will actually use it.

Your job, thus, is to interpret the client’s vision in such a way that it is accessible to the creative team.

This means no jargon, no fluff, and no “marketer-speak.” Create the brief so that a designer or developer can understand it.

At the same time, the creative brief is not the answer to the client’s problem; it’s a starting point to inspire your team. It should have just enough insight to challenge your team and get them to think creatively about the problem.

As one commentator points out, it’s always good to ask yourself: “Are you confident that this brief will inspire a solution to our problem?”

If the answer is a “no” or a “maybe,” it’s time to return to the drawing board.

 What Are Some Creative Brief Examples?

The best way to understand a creative brief is to see a few real-life examples.

Here’s a more creative brief for Quaker Oats . This one has an unorthodox structure, but it contains several pieces of information to help the creative team generate execution ideas. The problem is clearly stated, along with insights into the audience and the main message that the brand wants to convey for the campaign.

Here’s another example of a campaign to promote Netflix during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some of the additional pieces of information indicated here are the competitors and budget, which are also important considerations for the creative team when brainstorming for executions.

Finally, let’s look at a creative brief for Nike . This campaign addresses the rumors that Nike doesn’t treat its workers well. 

A creative brief like this provides robust guidelines for creative teams to work with so they can ensure that their output significantly contributes to the success of the business.

THE 5 COMPONENTS OF AN EFFECTIVE CREATIVE BRIEF

The creative brief doesn't look like much when it's wrapped up. It's at most 2 pages long. A good one will usually be free of jargon and marketer-speak. Many will also be visual. The effort that goes into creating this simple document, however, is immense. You have to have an acute understanding of the brand, the product, its target audience, and the message.

To write a good creative brief, you need to know five aspects of the campaign:

1. The Product

A creative campaign starts and ends with the product. After all, this is what you're tasked with selling. If you don't understand it well, you can't expect your creative team to do a good job of it.

Start by asking the client some fundamental questions about the product:

• What product are you advertising?
• What category does it belong to?
• Where is the product currently being sold? Where is it being advertised? Where will it be advertised in the future?
• What is the product's current status in the market?
• What are the product's existing brand values?
• What is the product's price point? How many variants are currently available?

Your goal is to map the product's current brand perception. This will be a combination of factors—price, quality, perceived quality, etc. Use the client's existing records, market surveys, and customer data to better understand the product and its brand. You'll use this information later when you write the creative brief.

2. The Business

The business and the product can often have a complex relationship. Sometimes, the business brand might be completely independent of the product. In most other cases, they might affect each other symbiotic.

For example, Toyota (the company) and Toyota Camry (the car) have different brand perceptions. A customer might see Toyota as "reliable" and "efficient". But he might see Camry as "unreliable" after a spate of recalls.

Business and product brand perceptions often bleed into each other. If a customer has repeated bad experiences with a product, he might associate that with the business itself. The exception is when the business is "invisible" to the customer. This usually happens with B2B brands, holding companies, etc.

For example, Luxottica manufactures several iconic eyewear brands, such as Ray-Ban and Oakley. However, the Luxottica brand itself is invisible to customers, so poor performance from one of its products is unlikely to affect its brand perception.

Your goal should be to:

• Analyze the business' brand perception.
• Understand the business relationship to the product brand.
• Map the factors affecting the business' brand perception.

In the creative brief, this information will be a core part of the campaign’s “background” section.

For example, this brief for Red Bull introduces the problem by framing it in the context of the business:

3. The Market

The 'market' is a combination of the “Three C’s”:

• Competitors, their strengths, weaknesses, market position, and media strategy .
• Context for the campaign - political, social, and technological movements.
• Category, i.e., how people see the product category.

All these have a marked influence on the campaign.

For example, Webflow, a no-code website builder, created several YouTube ads primarily targeted to individuals and businesses who own or manage websites. Its skits exaggerate the inconveniences of relying on an IT professional for minor changes, making do with slow websites and other pain points that the market may be experiencing with its competitors. 

Now, diving into context, more businesses are being built every year, and they will likely build websites. Webflow provides a solution that would enable more people to create efficient and aesthetically pleasing pages for their ventures.

Source: Commerce Institute

Finally, evaluating the website development category, website creation is often perceived to be intimidating and highly technical. Webflow’s ads aim to change that perception by enforcing that their platform can be easily utilized even if the user can’t write a single line of code.

When crafting a creative campaign, your goal should be to analyze the following aspects of the market:

Competitors:

• What are the products and the brand's chief competitors? What is their market share compared to the product?
• What is the competition's marketing strategy? Where do they advertise?
• What kind of messaging and tone does the competition use?
• What kind of customers buy the competitor's products?
• How does the market currently see the product or its category?
• Is there a cultural moment you can tap into to promote the product?
• What cultural values, ideas, or events can you align the product with?
• How is the economy doing? Is it a time for optimism? Or are people concerned with saving?

In business, marketing, and advertising, there is an adage called “riding the wave,” which also means maximizing opportunities to further your goals and objectives. For example, in 2022, the first teaser trailer for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie was released. Several brands from across industries rode its hype train until its release in July 2023. 

Xbox Barbie Dreamhouse Console and Controllers (Source: PCGamer )

Bumble’s Barbie-Themed Compliments to Spark Conversations (Source: Mashable )

Google, Bumble, Airbnb, Burger King, Xbox, and more created Barbie-themed versions of their products, leveraging the traction of the world’s most-loved doll and helping the movie gain even more attention. This brilliant marketing resulted in the Barbie movie becoming one of the top-grossing films of all time.  

• How do people perceive this product category? What factors affect this perception?
• Is there a change in people’s perception of the category? Is this change positive or negative? What is leading this change?
• Are there any category conventions you can use in the campaign?

From a viral video of a woman’s Stanley Cup surviving a car fire (and retaining the ice cubes inside) and a series of celebrity, influencer, and brand collaborations, Stanley Cups, which was primarily targeted at outdoor enthusiasts and blue-collar workers, became a social media cult favorite. From simply being functional insulated mugs, the company managed to transform the perception of their product into something connected to social cohesion and belonging. This built a desire for their product among many TikTok and social media consumers. 

From annual sales of $75 million a year, this change in perception catapulted Stanley’s classic Quencher tumbler to generating over $750 million in 2023. 

4. The Customers

Your customers are important, more so than anything else on this list.

( Image source )

Writing a creative brief requires a deep understanding of the target audience and its wants, desires, and tastes.

To do this, start by describing the following:

• Demographics data (age, sex, income, marital status).
• Psychographics data (interests, aspirations, lifestyles, habits).
• What they think about the product and the brand right now ("boring", "fun", "not for me", etc.).
• What you want them to think about the brand ("change perception", "shift frame of reference", etc.).
• Frustrations, aspirations, life needs, and shared beliefs you can tap into.
• The purpose of all this data is to find a trigger that will motivate them. This trigger should align with the campaign's objectives.

For example, to promote their Black Friday sale in 2023, Walmart released a Mean Girls-themed ad, which coincided with the hype for the new Mean Girls movie.

Aside from riding the wave of the movie’s release, this ad is successful because of several reasons:

• Nostalgia in millennials: Including the original cast of mean girls in the ad caught the attention of millennials, who are some of the most crucial demographic for Black Friday sales to be successful
• Hip brand perception: Walmart has been falling behind Target when it comes to having a youthful perception and has often become the subject of memes. Collaborating with Mean Girls is a good initiative to sway its current brand perception slowly

Source: Imgflip

5. The Campaign

Every campaign has a specific goal, message, and audience. It's not uncommon for brands to run several campaigns simultaneously with different messages. Your job is to understand the goals of your campaign and find a way to achieve them—that is, to define the campaign's strategy and approach.

To do this, answer the following questions:

• What is this campaign trying to do? Increase awareness? Increase traffic? Get more shares? Be as specific as possible.
• What customer action would make the campaign "successful"? Would you fill out a form? Click a link? Call the business?
• What specific challenge is the campaign trying to address? State this in a single sentence. For example, "We want to advertise new features to get more trials."
• What is your media strategy? Where will the campaign run?
• What is the chief message for the entire campaign?

Your goal is to find the "driving idea" for the campaign and where to run it.

For example, Stanley Cups leveraged social media influencers. So, from being functional insulated cups, the perception was changed to the Quencher being a symbol of coolness and belonging. 

Source: Stanley_brand Instagram

Stanley’s social media content features aesthetic lifestyle images that attract empowered and carefree women across different age groups.

Writing creative briefs for successful campaigns might seem like a lot of research - and it is - but it is crucial. Your briefs will be off-brand without understanding the campaign, customers, and product. And if the brief is off-brand, the results will suffer. This is why I recommend getting input from several people. Ask your marketers for data and your creative team for ideas. The more information you have, the better the final brief.

In the next section, I’ll walk you through the actual process of writing a creative brief.

HOW TO WRITE A CREATIVE BRIEF

Creative briefs don't have a fixed format. That said, if you need a template, we’ve got you covered. You can download free creative brief templates HERE - or read on to learn how to build your own. Most agencies have their own templates. Some have a simple text document, while others use more visual designs.

Regardless of its format, your creative brief must revolve around the five elements we covered earlier.

To write the creative brief, use the following template:

1. The Project

Start your creative brief by writing a broad overview of the project. Establish the client's identity, talk about the product, and list the campaign's goals.

2. Key Challenge

Every campaign has a key challenge. This is the "what" of the project.

Describe this challenge in a few short sentences.

You might have something like this:

• "[Client] wants to leverage a new feature to get new trials."
• "[Client] wants to reposition the product so a new user will consider it."
• "[Client] wants existing users to consume more of the product."

For example, here’s the key challenge in the Quaker Oats creative brief I shared earlier:

 3. Purpose of Communication

A successful campaign needs a clear and distinct purpose. This purpose should ideally be trackable and measurable and tied to the key challenge you described above.

Use this section to describe the action you want to inspire in your customers.

Try something like this:

• "[Client] wants to increase awareness of [Product]'s new feature."
• "[Client] wants to change opinion about [Product category]."
• "[Client] wants to mobilize existing customers of [Product] to visit its website."

4. Competitors

As we learned above, the client's competitors have a big impact on the campaign. Use this section to describe the key competitors and their media strategies briefly.

Some things you can include about the competition here are:

• Market share
• Media strategy
• SWOT analysis

5. Target Audience

Refer to the audience research you did earlier to describe the following:

• Demographics
• Psychographics
• Current perception/belief about the brand
• Target perception/belief about the brand
• Approach for motivating them to take action

6. Background or Context

Briefly describe the background and context of the campaign. Include specific details for the following:

• Cultural context, i.e., current events and ideas you could leverage to achieve campaign goals.
• Category context, i.e., how customers currently see the product category and how you can change it.
• Brand context, i.e., how customers currently see the product and its brand.

For example, this creative brief for TOMS shoes gives readers a detailed overview of the company’s background and its customers’ aspirations:

7. Tone and Brand Voice

Use adjectives to describe the tone, brand voice, and key qualities you want customers to associate with the:

• Product ("fun, reliable, efficient")
• Brand ("mature, trustworthy, cost-effective")

8. Media Strategy

Briefly describe how you plan to spread the message. Include the following

• Channel(s) you'll use for the promotion.
• Why this channel will help you reach your target audience.
• How can you use the channel's own form and audience expectations to make the idea more shareable (such as adding "tag a friend" on Facebook)?

Include details about the estimated budget for the campaign. If possible, break down budget requirements by creative type and promotion.

10. Chief Message

This is the "driving idea" behind the campaign. Usually, it's a short, pithy statement that condenses the campaign into a slogan.

Think of something like this from Reebok:

Or this one from PayPal:

One way to write a better creative brief is to create a press release that you might send to journalists at the end of the campaign. You don’t have to actually use it, but it helps you consider the campaign’s goals and the approach you used to achieve them.

These are only guidelines, of course. You can change the creative brief according to your requirements. As long as your creative team understands it, you are free to include or exclude anything you want.

Workamajig has built-in support for creative briefs to make the process seamless, and of course, these can be customized according to your needs. 

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How to Write a Creative Brief with Examples and Templates

By Joe Weller | March 5, 2024

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A  creative brief  is a roadmap for teams planning a marketing or advertising campaign, including the objectives, deliverables, and target audience. Strong creative briefs keep team members and external stakeholders aligned as the campaign develops.

  Inside this article, you’ll discover how to write a creative brief , the main elements to include, and downloadable example briefs and templates . Plus, you’ll learn how to use generative AI to help draft a creative brief .

Main Elements of a Creative Brief

Creative briefs should include sections detailing the campaign’s goals, deliverables, style, and target audience. The brief will also have information about the brand and competition in the marketplace.

A project manager for the team requesting the content or a  member of the marketing or advertising team will write a creative brief. The specific sections of a creative brief might vary depending on the project and its stakeholders, but keep these eight main elements in mind:  

• Brand Identity and Project Overview: The first section of the creative brief provides relevant background information about the brand’s mission and the campaign’s purpose, whether it is responding to pain points or advertising a new product. Summarizing these key details at the outset gives the creative team a focused direction and ensures the campaign fits into the overarching brand identity. 
• Objectives:  Clearly define goals and be sure to link them to  key performance indicators (KPIs) . Using  SMART  (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) goals when crafting objectives help you focus on the project and key metrics. 
• Competitive Analysis: Reviewing examples of recent campaigns from rival brands is a valuable strategy when seeking insight for a creative brief. Analyzing competitors’ strengths and weaknesses sheds light on what resonates with consumers and how to make a campaign stand out in the market.
• Target Audience:  Creative briefs should boil down which segment of the brand’s audience the campaign will target. Specific demographic profiles help the creative team understand customer behaviors and deliver the most effective and appealing assets.
• Tone and Style:  Whether defining a personality, listing adjectives that correspond with the core message, or designating a color palette, the creative brief clarifies the attitude and visual identity of the campaign. Designers need direction on the desired voice and style to ensure a unified final project that speaks to the target audience.
• Content Format and Deliverables:  Every creative brief must outline the specific content that the creative team needs to produce, such as social media assets, print advertisements, graphics, video content, online copy, or other elements of the campaign strategy. Include any format requirements or other specifications, so that the creative team can align their output with the campaign objectives.
• Timeline and Budget:  Stipulating key deadlines, checkpoints, and budget requirements enables the creative team to deliver on target. This information is crucial when working with external agencies, for whom the brief can function like a contract. Concrete schedule parameters give project managers details that they can follow up, warding off scope creep. Learn  how to manage scope creep  and keep projects on track.
• Stakeholders:  Briefs should include the contact details and roles for all the team members who will be involved in the project. Establishing individual responsibilities and review processes ensures internal and external stakeholders can communicate seamlessly throughout the process.

How to Write a Creative Brief

Writing a creative brief starts with gathering the information that will guide a campaign’s direction. Begin with a focused overview of the project and include concrete details on your objectives, audience, and deliverables.

A strong creative brief is clear, specific, and short. Think of it as a blueprint to inspire creativity and keep your team on track from ideation through delivery and execution. Consider using  creative brief templates  to save time and maintain consistency across multiple projects.  For branding campaigns or launches, a more specialized  brand brief  might be necessary. 

1. Gather Information and Resources  

Before you start writing, do the prep work for your brief. This might include researching competitors, analyzing pain points, meeting with stakeholders, and referencing past campaigns. Use this information to finalize your core message, target audience, and objectives.  

Once you have a clear idea of the campaign, gather the necessary supporting documents. Compile links to important resources, such as a brand style guide, digital asset library, and any example content for the creative team to reference.  

2. Decide What to Include  

The details of the campaign, stakeholders, and objectives will determine which elements of the creative brief are necessary. For example, internal team members might not need comprehensive information about your brand mission. Or you might include a budget for advertising campaigns, but not for designing a new website banner.

Keep in mind that the creative brief should be concise and focus on the creative direction of the campaign. If you need to determine a comprehensive marketing and distribution strategy, consider completing a  marketing strategy brief first.   

3. Name the Campaign and Write an Overview   

Naming the project is a simple first step to streamline communication. The campaign name should point to its core message — the idea, consumer benefit, or call to action (CTA) — the creative team needs to get across with their assets.  

Start by writing an overview that defines the core message in a few sentences. Consider including relevant brand identity aspects or drafting a short section with brand and product background. Establish why you are launching this campaign, the opportunities or challenges, and the takeaways for your audience. 

“For example, in our creative brief for a new rug collection launch, we highlighted our rugs’ unique designs inspired by Southwestern traditions and their high-quality sustainable materials. Conveying these key points up front allows designers and copywriters to center their creativity around the communication of these distinguishing factors,” offers  Connor Butterworth , CEO and Owner of  Southwestern Rugs Depot . 

4. Set Clear Objectives

Highlight one or two goals for the campaign that align with its core message. Be sure to define the KPIs you will use to measure success. Common campaign objectives include boosting engagement, increasing conversions, and communicating a specific call to action or desired consumer behavior.   

5. Analyze the Competition

Survey the competitive landscape for real-world models. Focus on a few major competitors and provide examples of their recent campaigns for similar products. Highlight key successes and failures to learn from, and create a list of the ways in which your brand or product differs.  

Elaine Chen , Founder of marketing consultancy Excogita, advises, “Creatives understand that not every project will immediately hit the mark, but they need feedback to get to the right place. Spend time looking at competing campaigns so that you have concrete ideas about what you feel will and won't work, and share some of these insights in your brief.”

6. Define the Demographic

Determine a primary target audience for the campaign. Are you trying to reach a segment of the current brand audience or potential new customers? Break down your target audience with demographic data — such as age, gender, and geographic location — as well as buying behaviors and psychographic information, such as preferences and interests. 

Instead of listing all the aspects of your target audience, use profiles or personas to draw a precise portrait of your customer in a couple sentences. Learn  how to create customer profiles  to better understand your audience with individualized buyer personas.  

7. Explain the Tone

Choose several adjectives that describe an attitude or personality for the campaign. Align this personality with the key message, cater it to your target audience, and fit it within your brand identity. Include links to any brand style guidelines or designated fonts and color palettes.

Should graphics feel sophisticated and minimalistic or playful and energetic? Is the tone authentic and empowering or confident and provocative? The adjectives you choose will guide both the visual direction and voice of your campaign, keeping all the elements of the project cohesive.

8. Designate Deliverables

Determine what assets or content the creative team needs to produce to meet the campaign objectives. Specify the content format, the number of deliverables, and any requirements or specifications, such as image dimensions or character limits. You might mention your distribution strategy if modified versions of the assets will be needed for different platforms.

9. Walk Through the Timeline and Budget

Working backward from the campaign launch date, determine when assets need to be delivered in order to be reviewed by key stakeholders and released on schedule. Fill in important due dates, review periods, meetings, and final approval deadlines leading up to the release date. If the creative team will be producing video content or multichannel advertising campaigns, establish a budget.

10. Present to Stakeholders

Share the completed brief with all the stakeholders involved, from the creatives who will be producing the content to the executives who will approve final designs. The creative team might consist of in-house designers and marketers, or it could be an external agency. Consider including a project manager to track deadlines and deliverables. Project managers can create a separate  project brief  to summarize high-level details.

Whether you present the brief at a  project kickoff meeting or distribute it electronically, be open to feedback. The creative team might have questions on the timeline, resources, tone, or approval process. The marketing director could help you fine-tune the target audience and core message. Refine the brief if necessary before you share the final version. Make sure everyone understands the direction of the project and their responsibilities.

Examples of Creative Briefs

These creative brief examples use variations on the basic creative brief template to communicate specific project details to stakeholders. These downloadable and customizable templates include example copy for a variety of creative brief scenarios.

Simple Creative Brief Example Template

Download the Simple Creative Brief Example Template for Microsoft Word

Download the Simple Creative Brief Blank Template for Microsoft Word

Here’s an example of a creative brief for a marketing campaign designed in-house. This short creative brief template keeps a tight focus on the project itself — and doesn’t waste time providing unnecessary context.

Client Creative Brief Example Template

Download the Client Creative Brief Example Template for Microsoft Word

Download the Client Creative Brief Blank Template for Microsoft Word

This example shows how a creative brief might be completed for implementing a marketing campaign with an agency. There is more information about the client — the brand, project message, and call to action — while leaving room for the creative team to innovate. 

Graphic Design Creative Brief Example Template

Download the Graphic Design Creative Brief Example Template for Microsoft Word

Download the Graphic Design Creative Brief Blank Template for Microsoft Word

Here’s an example of a creative brief for a graphic design project that is perfect for solo graphic designers or graphic design firms planning projects in collaboration with their clients. The simple, adaptable layout has room for details on image requirements and design elements, as well as direction about the project. 

For more elaborate design projects — such as a logo design or product design — consider using a specific  design brief .

Advertising Creative Brief Example Template

Download the Advertising Creative Brief Example Template for Microsoft Word

Download the Advertising Creative Brief Blank Template for Microsoft Word

This creative brief example uses a straightforward advertising campaign template to cover objective, tone, messaging, target audience, and non-negotiables. There are also key advertising elements needed for the campaign. 

What to Keep in Mind When Writing a Creative Brief for Internal Use vs. an Agency

Creative briefs are a campaign’s starting point for both in-house teams and agencies. The project’s stakeholders will determine the brief’s content. Both internal and external creative teams need information about the campaign’s message, but agencies might need more brand details.

Internal creative briefs are often short and direct, since the stakeholders will bring their understanding of the brand and its identity to the project. Internal creative teams might already be familiar with style guidelines, recent campaigns, and customer personas. It’s still important to include focused direction specific to the campaign objectives, but the brief can be more informal and flexible.

Creative briefs shared with external agencies, on the other hand, are often more extensive. CEO and Founder of  Awning.com Shri Ganeshram recommends crafting a “more detailed and structured brief” when working with an agency. “It has to convey the essence of your brand and project requirements without any assumed knowledge,” he continues. “When I worked with an external design agency for our marketing campaign, the detailed brief we provided helped them grasp our brand ethos quickly, resulting in a highly successful campaign.”

As a marketing executive with both in-house and agency experience, Chen points out that projects that are contracted out might also require more comprehensive briefs. “Many companies are only working with agencies on high-profile or very strategic assignments such as major advertising campaigns, creating new brands, or significant rebrands. Accordingly, the briefs will need to include lots of insights about the product and audience, while avoiding being too prescriptive to give the agency room to innovate.”

Additionally, while both internal and agency creative briefs typically include deliverables and deadlines, these stipulations might carry more weight externally. In his experience working with agencies, Ganeshram explains, “The creative brief acts as a contract of sorts that outlines what the client expects, providing a clear framework within which the agency operates. This distinction is crucial for ensuring both parties have aligned expectations.” 

Pitfalls to Avoid When Writing a Creative Brief

An effective creative brief empowers designers, advertisers, or marketers to deliver original and compelling content. On the other hand, vague or complicated briefs make it impossible for creative teams to meet expectations. Avoiding these pitfalls streamlines the creative process.  

There are five common pitfalls to keep in mind when writing creative briefs:  

Ambiguity:   

A vague direction can make it impossible for the creative team to understand the vision for the campaign. Provide specific information about the tone and message, as well as clear guidelines for the format of the final product. “If you leave anything up for interpretation, then you risk the result not being what you expected,” advises Kristien Matelski, Content/PR Manager at  Vizion Interactive . “I’ve found that a few good examples are much more valuable than just describing what I’m looking for.”

• Overprescription: Conversely, including too much detail can limit creativity and overwhelm the core message. Designers, copywriters, and other creatives need freedom to bring their own expertise and imagination to the project. “While detailed background information is always helpful, realize that you can only convey so much in a single communication,” Chen notes. “Avoid requiring your creative team to fold in too many messages or else you could end up with a garbled mess.”
• Broad or Unspecified Audience: It’s crucial to define a target audience with as much detail as possible. Large campaigns might have primary and secondary markets, but to create effective assets, the team needs to have a specific audience in mind and understand their behaviors. “Too often companies are so focused on what they have to say that they end up failing to incorporate customer perspectives and create a message that just falls flat,” cautions Chen.
• Unrealistic Expectations:  The purpose of a creative brief is to keep stakeholders’ expectations and responsibilities aligned throughout the project’s development. However, if the brief sets impossibly tight deadlines or unattainable objectives, creatives won’t be able to deliver compelling results.
• Complicated CTA:  Campaigns work best with a simple and clear core message or desired outcome. Creative briefs that fail to develop a clear call to action result in campaigns that can’t meet their objectives. Chen adds, “It's most realistic to ask consumers to do just one easy thing after seeing your ads. A complicated, multistep process or a confusing mix of options is doomed to fail.”

How to Use Generative AI to Write a More Effective Brief

Recent advancements in generative AI have made it a powerful tool for crafting creative briefs. AI can analyze pain points and customer data, suggest relevant core messages, and elevate directions on tone and style. Think of the AI as a partner or assistant when drafting your prompts, and be prepared to finetune the results.

“Generative AI can be a game-changer for crafting creative briefs in marketing and advertising,” observes Peter Wood, CTO at  Spectrum Search . “It's essential to leverage AI for initial idea generation. By feeding the AI system with your campaign’s objectives and target audience demographics, you can get a diverse range of creative concepts and narratives, which might not be immediately obvious to a human team.”

You can also use AI to assist in data analysis when researching your competitors and establishing customer personas. Wood continues, “This analysis can inform the tone, style, and content of your brief, ensuring it is aligned with what resonates with your audience.”  

“As a content manager, I’ve found that creative briefs have been a primary use for AI,” reveals Kristien Matelski. To get the best results from the AI, she recommends providing it with background information about your brand and objectives, as well as detailed instructions for the content you want it to generate. Keep revising and updating your prompts as you work, and make sure to verify any facts or data in your results. 

Here are four tips to keep in mind when utilizing AI to draft your creative brief:  

• Pretend the AI Is Your Assistant:  AI is not a search engine, and it can handle more complex directions. “Be as detailed as possible with what you want, like you’re giving instructions to an assistant to write a brief or outline for you,” suggests Matelski.
• Provide Background:  Feed the AI relevant information about the brand, product, or campaign objectives. Matelski says, “I generally start by giving the AI some context about the who, or the company we are generating a creative brief for, including a link to their website. Then I tell it the what that we’re creating, a creative brief or outline for a new product page.”
• Include Specifics:  If you are using a template, make sure to list the fields you want the AI to generate. Establish any requirements and important campaign directives to include in the brief. As an example, Matelski offers, “Be sure to mention X, Y, Z brand names, color choices, and keywords.”
• Edit, Edit, Edit:  Once the AI has generated the brief, read through the results and determine next steps. “You’ll need to edit yourself or go back and forth with the AI a few times to get it how you want it,” Matelski acknowledges. You might ask the AI to condense the overview, suggest a more playful core message, narrow the objectives, or tailor the deliverables for a specific social media platform. Consider whether you need to provide additional information with your instructions.

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How to Write a Creative Brief (Example & Template Included)

What Is a Creative Brief?

A creative brief is a short, one-or-two-page document that summarizes marketing and advertising projects. Creative briefs are used by marketers and creative professionals to define the goals, scope and timeline for a project and set guidelines for their teams. For this reason, a creative brief can be described as a project management document for creative teams.

Who Should Create a Creative Brief?

A creative brief may be written by an in-house marketing team, an advertising agency or a marketing consultant for internal purposes. It’s a document that should capture the requirements of a client who needs their services.

The creative brief is like a blueprint for a project that’s made to help graphic designers, writers, videographers and other members of a creative team know what they’re responsible for and how their work and deliverables fit into the larger project.

After you write a creative brief for your team, you’ll need to plan, schedule and track your creative project. To do so, you’ll need project management software like ProjectManager . ProjectManager is equipped with tools such as Gantt charts, kanban boards, project dashboards and timesheets to help you manage any creative project. Assign work to your team members, create schedules, track costs and much more. Get started for free today.

Why Are Creative Briefs Important?

The value of having a creative brief is that it sets out to ensure that the deliverables from the creative project meet the client’s expectations and business needs. Because of their clear value in managing marketing and advertising projects, creative project managers typically employ them for each project.

Yes, a creative brief is just a document, but it’s an essential one. If you have a well-made-up creative brief at the front of your project , you’re less likely to have problems as you progress through the life cycle of the work.

When Should You Use a Creative Brief?

A creative brief might be used for a variety of marketing and advertising projects such as:

• Launching a marketing campaign for a new product or brand
• Revamping your existing marketing strategy
• Rebranding an existing business
• Creating a website for your brand
• Creating a promotional video
• Starting a social media campaign
• Guiding your marketing team when working for an external client

Creative Brief Outline

A creative brief can be made in many ways, from a Word document to a PowerPoint presentation or PDF. While there’s no single way to write a creative brief, as the structure of a creative brief depends on who’s requesting the creative brief and who’s drafting it.

For example, a marketing agency working for an external client will need to gather as much information about their client as an in-house marketing team working on a project. Having said that, here’s a quick overview of the main elements most creative briefs should include.

• Company background: Include important information about your client such as its company’s core values, mission and vision as well as the name of the project , what it is and why it’s being done.
• Brand voice: The brand voice is critical to success and must be tied to the target audience and their values, so decide if it’s serious, light, humorous, etc.
• Message: Have a clear, simple and single message to tell the target audience. How will they believe that message to be true?
• Target audience: Who’s the target audience? What do they think about the product or service you’re developing, and is there anything that the creative team should avoid? Also, note the competition.
• Market insights: What are the key insights that have been learned about the market, and how does that relate to the company, brand or product?
• Project goals & objectives: Outline what needs to be accomplished, how it’ll be measured and what success will look like.
• Project scope: The scope of a project simply refers to all the tasks that will be executed.
• Project deliverables: List how to deliver the message to the audience and what the best way to do that is.
• Project timeline: Have a schedule to note when something is needed, when it must be done, how many revisions can be fit into that timeframe, etc.
• Project budget: What’s the financial commitment to developing this project?
• Approval: Who’s responsible for making approvals and decisions related to approval?

How to Write a Creative Brief

Now, let’s go over five simple steps you should follow when writing a creative brief.

1. Start by Understanding Your Client’s Requirements

Understanding the expectations and requirements of your client is key to success when writing a creative brief. This will be easier if you’re leading an in-house marketing team, as your team members will already have a good understanding of your company’s strategy, target audience and goals. If you’re working for an external client, make sure you get as much information from them as possible and make sure they approve your creative brief.

2. Conduct Market Research

Don’t neglect the work and marketing research before the creative brief is written. Some parts will be easier to develop than others. Defining the target audience and the best strategies to reach potential customers will require your team to do market research. Be sure to give those parts of the creative brief their share of time to get it done right.

3. Set the Goals for Your Creative Brief

Once you’ve understood the project requirements , it’s time to translate them into measurable and realistic goals for your team. For example, the main goal of your creative brief might be to simply increase the brand awareness of your company. Meet with your client and agree on an attainable goal, such as 30% more visitors to their website.

4. Define Your Project Scope & Deliverables

To accomplish the goals set forth in your creative brief, your marketing team will take a series of actions such as launching a social media campaign. Some deliverables will be images and promotional text created by your creative team. Once this social media campaign is live, you will track its success using digital analytics tools. Brainstorm with your team so that you don’t miss any detail.

5. Create a Budget for Your Creative Brief

Now that you’ve defined what your team should accomplish and how it’ll be accomplished, you’ll need to estimate the costs of each activity on your project scope. Once you know the costs for each task, you will be able to create a budget for the creative brief.

Creative Brief Template

Our free creative brief template is a great tool to get started with creative briefs. It’ll facilitate the process and help you make sure you don’t miss anything.

Creative Brief Example

The ad agency, Wieden & Kennedy , came up with the Happiness Factory campaign for Coke, with the tagline, “the Coke Side of Life” in 2005. It was driven by an issue that its client had, specifically that “Coke had become a forgotten friend.”

Its challenge to the creative team was to remind people what makes Coke special. The brand idea they wanted to deliver to their target audience was that Coke is the genuine taste of happiness. To support that, they listed that Coke is delicious and refreshing, but it won’t resolve world peace or restore the ozone layer.

Therefore, the tone was honest, intimate and personal, being friendly, joyful and uplifting. With these signposts to lead the creative team, they developed this eye-catching video . It’s remarkable to see how an outline can be filled in so dynamically with the right creative team and the proper direction.

Creative Brief vs. Client Brief

As stated above, a creative brief is created by marketers and creative professionals to guide the efforts of their teams. A client brief on the other hand is a similar document that’s created by a client, who uses this document to communicate his expectations to the leaders of a creative team who will then turn that client brief into a creative brief.

Creative Brief vs. Content Brief

A content brief is simply a document that’s created to guide the efforts of writers who are working on websites, social media management or other forms of copywriting. It may include guidelines such as brand voice, word count and SEO keywords.

Tips for Writing a Creative Brief

Just because they are highly effective, doesn’t mean that creative briefs are present in every instance of project planning . Surveys of ad agency executives have shown that many of the creative briefs used are not clear, and can be incomplete or inconsistent.

To avoid these shortfalls, the creative brief should be written after a client explains their expectations. Then the creative team can compile a list of questions that are answered by the requestor, usually a marketing team leader.

The answers to these questions will become the template for the creative brief and the whole creative execution of the project. As the project moves forward, the creative brief is always referred to, and any deviation can be identified and addressed.

Avoid Adding Too Many Details to Your Creative Brief

Adding too much information to a creative brief is a common mistake. While the creative team should know all there is about the product or service being developed, this is a creative brief—emphasis on the brief. The brief must be short and to the point; there are supporting documents for the details.

Know the Client Before Drafting Your Creative Brief

The client interview is critical to a successful creative brief. They are, after all, the ones who know what they want from the project. The creative team needs to have clear communications with the client, and before any creative brief is executed, it must be approved by the client.

Don’t Rush the Process of Writing the Creative Brief

While a creative brief is a short document you should take your time when researching and writing one. Also, once it’s completed, don’t just let it sit with the creative team. Yes, they can come to you with questions, but it’s best to be proactive and keep the human interaction present. Be available for the creative team to ask questions through the project life cycle .

How ProjectManager Helps You Manage Creative Briefs

While a creative brief sets guidelines for your creative team it’s just the first step when planning a creative project. Once you’ve written a creative brief, you’ll need the right project management software to plan how your team will execute the work. ProjectManager is robust project management software that offers tools that are ideal to plan, schedule and track creative projects. Here are some of its key features.

Plan With Multiple Project Planning Tools

ProjectManager’s project planning tools are perfect to plan and schedule the work that’s needed for your creative brief. You can use Gantt charts , kanban boards, task lists and project calendars to create a project schedule, assign tasks to your team members, set due dates and collaborate with them in real time.

Real-Time Project Dashboards & Reports

ProjectManager’s real-time dashboards are ideal for tracking costs, timelines, progress and workload at a glance. In addition, ProjectManager lets you create project reports in minutes so you can keep stakeholders informed.

Track Labor Costs With Timesheets

Creative briefs are executed by a diverse team of professionals, which means different rates of labor costs. ProjectManager’s timesheets and planning tools let you track the work hours of each member of your creative team so you don’t miss anything.

The creative brief is one of many essential documents that help with the planning of a winning project. ProjectManager is online project management software that helps you plan, track and report on every stage of the project’s progress. It offers kanban boards and a collaborative platform for teams to work together more productively and provides managers with real-time data, so they know exactly where the project is at any time. See how it can empower all your teams by taking this free 30-day trial.

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7 creative brief templates you can use right now

Creative brief templates can bring structure to your marketing campaign ideas — while saving you time in the process. Use one of the creative brief templates in this guide for your next project to fully harness your creativity and channel ideas that will help you reach your goals.

If you are ready to level up with interactive creative briefs, try Aha! software — purpose-built for product and marketing teams. You can document goals, create briefs, build calendars, and coordinate go-to-market plans — all in one place.

Get started using our creative brief whiteboard template — with a free trial.

Creative briefs align creative work with business strategy — keeping everyone on-brand, on-message, and on-track so you can successfully deliver against your marketing goals. Jump ahead to any section:

• What is a creative brief?

How to write a creative brief

Creative brief components and examples, 7 creative brief templates.

A creative brief captures the creative essence of marketing and advertising campaigns. It is a foundational document that establishes important details about your approach and deliverables — such as your objectives, launch date, budget, audience, and key messages. Creative briefs help internal teams, third-party consultants, or advertising agencies understand the brand voice and message you want to deliver.

Creative briefs are particularly useful for communicating with external creative or advertising agencies, but they are helpful for internal teams too.

Writing a creative brief is a great way to kick off your next marketing campaign. In this guide, we will go over how to write your own, what to include, and provide free creative brief templates to help you get started.

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Brafton: What makes an effective creative brief (and how to create your own)

Writing a creative brief requires a deep understanding of your strategic goals , where your product or service fits in the market , customer needs, as well as the resources available to your team. With that in mind, here is how to write a creative brief:

Name your project

Choose a descriptive but concise title for your marketing campaign to include in your brief. As you share your plans with stakeholders, this will serve as a shorthand for the project's focus.

2. Refer to your marketing strategy

Writing creative briefs is part of the strategic planning process. Consult overall business goals and marketing objectives first to ensure your creative brief will support them.

3. Gather the details

Project owners, budget, and timelines are all details to consider before writing your creative brief. You may need to consult leadership to collect this information.

4. Write your creative brief

Your creative brief should include components like customer truths, key messages, brand voice, and deliverables. Use a creative brief template to capture these important elements.

5. Review with the team

Once your creative brief is drafted, solicit feedback from other members of the marketing team. Collaborating on a creative brief helps to ensure you have included all the right details — and builds excitement for new campaigns.

6. Share with stakeholders

Whether you have prepared it for internal teams or an external agency, present your creative brief to communicate what you want to achieve. Treat your creative brief as a touchstone that everyone can refer back to as your campaign gets underway.

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Introduction to marketing roadmaps

HubSpot: How to Write a Creative Brief in 11 Simple Steps

Forbes Agency Council: How To Write A Killer Creative Brief

As the name suggests, creative briefs are not long or complex documents. In a page or two, you should be able to summarize your project parameters and distill your approach into key concepts. Here are the essential elements to include, questions to help you fill out each section, as well as creative brief examples:

Marketing strategy templates

Marketing messaging templates

Marketing roadmap templates

Competitor analysis templates

Market positioning templates

Marketing calendar templates

Using a creative brief template makes it easy to write a succinct and compelling overview that clearly communicates your ideas. Below you will find a whiteboard template from Aha! software as well as free Excel and Word options.

Creative brief template for whiteboard sessions

This creative brief whiteboard template in Aha! software is a great option for collaborating between marketing and creative teams. Everyone can talk through ideas in a live session, which helps to ensure you are all in sync on the creative plan.

Start using this template now

Simple creative brief template

This is a starter creative brief — it includes all of the key components in a streamlined document. You can easily adapt this template for a wide range of marketing projects, from content marketing to social media campaigns.

Campaign creative brief template

Use this template to plan your creative approach for a marketing campaign. For example, if you are working with advertising agencies or consultants, you could outline a creative treatment for an advertisement , new logo, or tagline. For internal teams, this template can kick-off a new lead generation or email campaign. Anytime you need to create a new treatment or adaptation, write a new creative brief.

Agency creative brief template

Agency creative briefs are often used within marketing agencies. An account manager can use this template to capture what a client wants to achieve and essential details about their audience, key messages, and brand voice. This helps the agency team better understand their clients' needs so they can deliver outstanding service that fits their brand.

Content creative brief template

A content creative brief is used to provide writers and designers with the information they need to successfully produce a piece of content. This type of creative brief is typically for planning larger pieces of content like ebooks, whitepapers, or case studies — but you could use them to plan more routine content like blog posts as well. It is important to include details like research, background, and examples that can help creators understand your company's point of view on the subject.

Design creative brief template

This template is helpful for working with graphic design professionals. Design creative briefs set you up for success by ensuring designers understand the brand and target customer as well as elements like tone, look and feel, and desired reaction. A detailed and thorough design creative brief will help produce high-quality design for everything from a new landing page to a billboard.

Video creative brief template

Video creative briefs help production teams efficiently plan video projects. Creating new videos for a product or company is a significant investment, whether it is a short digital advertisement or a full brand video. Starting with a well-defined creative brief provides the clarity needed to produce a video that speaks to the target customer's problems in a compelling way, while staying on time and on budget.

Brilliant marketing happens when entire team is centered around a clear creative brief and well-defined plan. Get started, stay open minded, and share these templates with your teams or agencies.

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Home Blog Business Quick Guide to Write and Present a Creative Brief

Quick Guide to Write and Present a Creative Brief

If you’ve ever done a project where a creative team is involved, probably from the get-go, the term creative brief became familiar to you quickly. Commonly, any project requiring some creative input will need this document to be a roadmap that minimizes mistakes and accelerates plans. 

However, there are 2 moments when building the creative brief is quite tricky: first, aligning the team to define the requirements needs prudent project management. Second, afterward, presenting and following through with the creative brief can be challenging. If you are a project manager, read on as we discuss the key elements of a creative brief and how you can create one that your partners will love.

Table of Contents

• Who writes the Creative Brief
• Why is the Creative Brief important

Parts of a Creative Brief

How to write a creative brief.

• How to Present a Creative Brief

Use of Templates for Creative Briefs

Key insights for a creative brief presentation.

• Final Words

What is a Creative Brief 

Let’s begin by framing this term because it’s possible you and your team have never heard of it, and you have just logged off a Zoom call and are Googling it for the first time. 

A creative brief summarizes a project’s brand background, the audience it’s meant to reach, and the campaign goals to be achieved. Of course, this is a textbook simplified response to the question, and we must not think that the creative brief is so essential and unimportant. On the contrary, regardless of how short it can be, this document will be the roadmap of guidelines and expectations for any project or campaign you and your team are launching.  

The components of creative briefs are relatively similar, although the structure and specific detail may vary depending on the project, industry, and organization. They typically include the following.

• Company Background
• Deliverables
• Objectives and Goals
• Target Audience
• Messaging/ Call to Action
• Competitors
• Timeline and Budget

By itself, the creative brief should be the guiding light to all the teams involved and should provide enough information so that every person involved in the project can advance their tasks without having to over and over again come back to the source. 

Who Writes the Creative Brief

If you seek the answer to this question, it’s not an easy one. Because actually, the creative brief is a complex summary of the complete project, whoever writes it should be the person with better access across the organization.  

Let’s go a bit deeper into this. Generally, if you are working with an agency, a client manager will collect data from creative and executive teams and include background info from the client. Then will revise with any groups that manage budgets, and it’s all set to go. However, if you are working with an internal team, the stakeholders will be quite different and the challenges. Whoever is writing the brief should collaborate with the internal client and local creative teams to reach agreements. If they belong to the organization, this person can even be a project manager looking to understand the plan’s scope better. 

Even though the creative brief tends to be quite structured, whoever is writing the document is a bit more lenient. What matters is that the person in charge can collect all the information necessary efficiently. Something essential to consider is that not necessarily who writes the creative brief will present or follow up. 

Why is the Creative Brief Important 

In recent years, the creative brief has taken a role in project guidelines and roadmaps . This is very relevant because it allows both sides -client and creative- to be aligned from the beginning. 

The most important reason it’s necessary to create a brief is that it’s an industry standard, clients will be looking to take it to begin a project, and an agency team might need it to start as well. 

Having a structured creative brief will allow for several improvements along the way, including:

Establishing Clear Direction for Teams

We can all agree that working with a boss that gives vague instructions is frustrating. When instructions are vague, it can lead to confusion, inefficiency, and a lack of confidence in your ability to fulfill the assigned tasks. The same could happen if you allow your team to work on a creative project without sharing a brief.

Regardless of how short it can be, a creative brief can give your team a clear direction on the steps to take during the project lifecycle. It ensures that everyone involved shares a common understanding of the project’s purpose and desired results and aligns their creative efforts toward achieving them.

Making Resource Allocation Efficient

The team can allocate resources more efficiently with a comprehensive understanding of the project’s needs. This includes assigning the right people with the appropriate skills to specific tasks and ensuring that resources are utilized effectively. The brief acts as a guide in determining the optimal distribution of time, budget, and manpower, minimizing waste, and maximizing productivity.

Furthermore, the brief serves as a reference point for evaluating resource availability and potential gaps. It helps identify any additional resources or support needed to execute the project successfully.

Let’s say a marketing team is tasked with creating a promotional campaign for a new product launch. Using the brief provided by the client or manager, they will need a graphic designer to create visual assets, a copywriter to craft compelling messaging, and a social media manager to execute the campaign across various platforms.

Saving Time and Cost

Revision is the Thanos of any creative work – it is inevitable. A revision or two is good, but you might lose the time and cost you can’t afford when your team has to do it too many times. You must establish a clear direction and expectations upfront through a creative brief.

The reduction in guesswork leads to several benefits. It and effort, saving it from trial and error or exploring different paths. It increases productivity as team members can proceed confidently, knowing they are working towards the intended outcome. It minimizes the risk of misunderstandings or misaligned creative outputs, as everyone works based on a shared understanding.

Maintaining Accountability

A creative brief sets a project’s key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs are measurable goals or metrics that help evaluate the success and effectiveness of the creative work.

When goals are measurable, it becomes easier to hold oneself or team members accountable for their progress. Team members can refer to the brief throughout the project to stay on track and fulfill their obligations. It serves as a reference point to remind individuals of their tasks and the expected outcomes.

Higher Quality Final Product

A study published by the Design Society proves a correlation between a well-crafted brief and a creative output. The findings highlight that the quality of the content brief greatly affects the quality of results that teams produce. It provides a framework for the creative team to channel their talent and energy, ensuring they are aligned with the project’s goals and objectives. 

So, whether you’re embarking on a marketing campaign, designing a product, or creating captivating content, investing time and effort in crafting a robust creative brief is an investment in success.

As we mentioned before, the creative brief is, as its name states, a short explanation of a creative project. However, to make sure it is efficient and provides all the info all the people involved will need, it’s important to make sure it has all of the following parts. 

Company and Product Background 

In this context, we need to frame the company’s background, meaning what the company does, what products will be involved in the campaign, and the overall vision. It is possible this campaign targets explicitly one product or vertical, so it’s essential to focus on that one specifically to avoid misunderstandings. Also, take some time to ad the main problem that this campaign or project will fix; this will also help all the stakeholders be on the same page. 

Project Scope 

This section will discuss the campaign’s expectations: is it a launch for a new project, is it an awareness campaign and is the company opening a new social media channel ? Whatever the campaign will push forward, it must be stated in this document. This section is one of the most important ones, as it also includes the goals that must be completed in this campaign and the overall strategic structure.  

Audience and Target 

Including both demographic and psychographic aspects, it’s essential to ad all relevant information about the potential user or buyer. For this scenario, it’s always great to add an avatar or buyer persona that will clearly define who the campaign is for. 

The “big idea”

Generally, this is what in the field they call the concept of the campaign. Here we will integrate critical messages that will allow the creative teams to execute on that idea. Also, it will provide a teaser to all the other teams to start getting familiar with the message going out to the public. 

Voice of the brand

Every campaign might have a different voice is used, especially if the campaign to be put in place is exploring a new space of audiences or even a rebrand. However, the brief most explore the tone that the project will have and provide a clear messaging voice to the brand. 

Competitors 

The creative brief must explore briefly who and what the competition is. It’s crucial in this section to include any related challenges that might arise to be ready beforehand to act upon them. 

Logistics 

One of the most important sections of the brief is the logistical details because all the departments must be aligned. This section will include budgets and timeframes that need to be observed by all members of the team. 

1. Provide the Company Background

One section of the creative brief should describe your company – what you do, your mission , your position in the marketplace, and possibly a brief company history. You may skip this section if you are working with an internal team. But if you outsource the services to an agency or work with external partners, providing a comprehensive description of your company becomes even more crucial.

This helps the agency or creative team get acquainted with your business and the overall context within which they will work. It allows them to align their work with your company’s objectives and deliver creative solutions that accurately represent your brand.

2. Describe the Project/ Work Scope

What do you want to accomplish with the project you are launching? In this section, you have to describe the deliverable you need, with a detailed list of requirements and relevant background information that may help the creative team understand the context and significance of the project. Our guide on Project Scope can give you guidance about the steps to follow.

For example, are you looking to develop a new website or redesign an existing one? Whatever the work will accomplish should be clearly stated in the document.

3. Share the “Big Idea”/ Objectives

Your team needs to know the “what is” and the “why’s” of the project. The “big idea” refers to the overarching objective or central concept you aim to achieve with the creative deliverables. It represents the core message or theme guiding the creative team’s work.

For example, if you launch a search ad campaign, your objective could be “Increase website conversion rate by 15% within the next three months.” 

Remember, your objectives should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound).

4. Identify the Audience

Personalization will be vital in developing a new product or launching a marketing campaign. When your team knows exactly who the receivers are of the final product, they can tailor their work to engage and carry meaning for that specific audience effectively.

Identifying the audience means understanding their demographics (quantifiable social categories like age), psychographics (interests, lifestyles, values), and pain points. From this information, you can create your customer persona so your team can visualize and humanize your audience.

5. Set the Message and Voice

Do you need a copy with an authoritative tone, or do you want to sound friendly? The creative brief should highlight the key messages that must be conveyed through the project and the tone you want to use. You may have brand guidelines to ensure they have a cohesive voice across different campaigns. However, you may need to adapt this when exploring new markets or touchpoints.

In this case, you need to go back to the type of audience you are targeting and adapt your messaging. Human beings make decisions based on emotions, and creating an emotional connection with your target market can significantly impact their response to your message. By tailoring your messaging to address these aspects, you can effectively engage and resonate with your audience.

6. Identify the Competition

Competition is a valuable source of learning and experience. When you include a section that defines your competitors in the creative brief, your team gains a clear understanding of the landscape you are in and enables them to develop effective strategies that highlight your competitive advantages.

For example, if you’re launching a new mobile app, including information about similar apps in the creative brief allows the team to evaluate their features, design, and user experience. This analysis can guide the team in creating a unique value proposition and highlighting the app’s distinctive features to attract users.

7. Set the Timeline and Budget

For complex projects, it’s important to specify in the brief the time allotted and the delivery schedule of the output. A budget may also be included. With this information, the creative team can plan their logistics and better align their decision-making process with the client’s resources.

In an advertising project, for example, you can set milestones or significant stages within the project timeline that mark the progress of important deliverables. These milestones help track the project’s progress and ensure that it stays on track.

How to Present a Creative Brief 

If your team comes from an agency background or presents it to an agency, a simplified document will do. You can go to any documents app and create a brief. However, being a standard for the creative industry, something more may be expected from it aesthetically. So we will provide some recommendations to step up your game, convince your team, and have an extremely professional presentation that will impress them all. 

Creative Brief Formats 

The classic 1 pager.

Most old-school creative practitioners are used to a simplified document that can even be written by hand, where one-liners are used to talk about the product, ideas, and problems. However, modern problems need modern solutions, and now that advertising and marketing have become much more complex, a simple Word 1 pager may fall very short.

The one pager presentation can be enriched with additional information, like key metrics. Let’s say that you are preparing a creative brief for an advertising campaign, the slide can include key metrics such as CPM, CAC, or information about the marketing funnel. If you don’t know all the metrics, there are some useful tools like a CPM calculator that will help to calculate these values knowing one of the parameters. If you need this to be very portable, you can create a one Google Slide presentation and include all the info in there adding a bit of color and format. 

The 2 Page Version 

A bit more extensive than the 1 pager, 2 pages allows you to produce a longer document where you can even include design like infographics or charts that might be useful to the team. It’s ok to make the brief a little more unrestricted, as long as you clearly state all the required information for the campaign. You can even extend a tad more if you need to; make sure you maintain the brief essence. 

Alternative formats 

Powerpoint presentation .

If you plan to collaborate with the rest of the team, go the extra mile and create something with more design elements. A great way to go is a simple PowerPoint presentation where you can add phrases or information about each slide in each of the slides one of the steps. A significant advantage of using a PowerPoint template is that you can also include any company (either your client’s or yours) style elements. If you currently don’t have any you’d like to use, don’t worry; we have your back.

To make sure your presentation has everything you need, it’s important that when you’re looking for a template, you plan out and outline all the information you will add to the brief. Make sure you don’t jam your slides with text and make good use of the white space. Include any brand data you need to include, and don’t be shy of having charts or visual references that will get the message across.  

Pitch Deck 

The creative brief in structure can be pretty similar to a pitch deck, so an exciting approach can be to use a pitch deck and substitute some elements. 

The pitch deck usually begins with an introduction where you can include brand or company basics. Afterward, the next slide would generally have the problem, which is an excellent way to frame the project’s scope. Moving forward, you would see a solution or project which can be exchanged for the big idea. From then on, the pitch deck generally explores KPIs related to achievable goals, market sizes, and demographics, including buyer personas or targets. Therefore, you can easily turn a pitch deck template into a creative brief deck with a couple of tweaks. 

Trello to PowerPoint 

If you want to supercharge your brief and earn some automation points, you can also create a Trello board where every column is one of the elements of the creative brief. From then on, you can create cards with the specifics, include tasks, and add timelines for better visibility. You can even make this brief-Trello into a collaborative tool so all your team can get ad information relevant to the project. 

For the last step, you can use our tutorial on converting Trello Boards into PowerPoint presentations and sending this out to all the stakeholders as an easy to verify PDF that can evolve with the project. 

Using templates for creative briefs can be a helpful practice to streamline the process and save time. They provide a standardized structure for creative briefs, ensuring that all necessary information is in a consistent format that the creative team and the client can easily understand. Templates eliminate the need to start from scratch for every new project, allowing you to focus more on the content and specific details of the brief rather than spending time on formatting and structuring.

Generally, the creative brief will be discussed between the client and creative teams to ensure that it includes all the crucial points. However, the way this meeting goes depends on what both parties need. Traditionally, reviewing the creative brief is a regular sit-down session, and a simple document is shared between the parts. However, after 2020 we have gotten more and more used to virtual meetings and new ways of doing things. 

Presenting the creative brief is an excellent opportunity to showcase your client in an innovative format all the work you will be doing from them based on your understanding. Depending on the media you chose to work your creative brief, 1-2 pagers, PowerPoint presentation, or even a bold Trello board, it is a great idea to take into account these tips. 

Schedule the time

This way, you will know your client will be providing you with their full attention to revise and approve the brief; often, this is the document that kicks off a campaign or creative project. 

Make an impactful presentation

In many cases, this meeting will be the first time you share the overall strategy or “big idea” with your client. Sometimes brief creative sessions include presenting slogans or brand claims that can be inspiring and emotional. Don’t underestimate this opportunity, and start building this excitement with your client. 

Leave time for questions

If your client is not the creative type or has little experience with the process like this, they might have many questions. Ensure you don’t rush through the presentation and leave some space for interaction. Some of the client questions might come in handy afterward when developing the plan. 

Final Words 

Having a creative brief is not only an industry standard for many but also a common language. The advantages of having and building a well-structured one can take time in the beginning but shave time off afterward. 

Hopefully, with this guide and some extra inventive tips, you and your team will build a simple yet cohesive creative brief that will make your next project uber-successful. 

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The ultimate creative brief template and how to use it

12 min read

July 8, 2024

Before embarking on any project, whether big or small, you need to define the goals for the project and make clear plans for achieving them. This will help you and your team to understand the objective of the project and complete it without any hitches. 

To communicate your goals to your team, you need to provide everyone with a creative brief. If you do not know how to write a creative brief, or if you want to learn how to write more effective briefs, keep reading! In this article, we explain how to easily produce a creative, and effective, brief. You will also find a creative brief template that you can use for your own brand campaigns. 

What is a creative brief? 

A creative brief is a document that defines the goal(s) and processes of a project in more detail. The brief also explains each project member’s role in the overall project’s accomplishment.  

Creative briefs, as the name implies, are usually short. They explain the expectations, challenges, proposed solutions, and the ways that creative teams will work together to make the solution a possibility. 

Short projects sometimes do not require a creative brief. However, before commencing a brand campaign, a team needs to have a creative brief. In most organizations, creative briefs are standard practice. An agency can’t start working on a project until the creative brief has been presented. 

What is the form of a creative brief? 

A creative brief form is a questionnaire that stakeholders of a project complete. The form helps gather information from all involved people and presents it in a well-laid-out format that will be used to draft the actual brief. 

Creative brief outline – What is included in a creative brief 

When preparing a powerful brief for your own team or agency, you should cover the following points:

Background information (company description)

A design creative brief always begins with a short description of your company and brand. This part gives a concise summary of the vision and mission of your company. Explaining your company’s background makes it easier for everyone to understand your goals and motivations. 

The next part of your creative brief explains what distinguishes your company from similar brands. You should capitalize on your unique selling proposition (USP) to achieve the goals of your campaign. Harnessing the USP of your brand helps you gain the attention of your target audience and meet desired goals.

After the brand’s description and your USP, you now come to the project’s objectives. What are the goals of the project, and how do you plan to achieve and measure them? Effective creative briefs concisely detail what is expected to be achieved at the end of the project. 

Target audience

The target audience for every campaign varies based on age, gender, location, and needs. Therefore, the brief for a creative campaign should precisely define the target group that you want to address. This information is also important for creating the right content.    

Market position and competitors

In the next step, you should describe your market position as well as define your competitors. These can be companies that sell a similar product or target the same audience. Analyzing your competitors can also generate new ideas for your own project.   

Deliverables

In this section, you should define what type of content your creative team or agency will be producing for the project. This could include designs, slogans, or a video. 

Tone of voice

In your brand guidelines, you might have already defined a tone of voice for your brand – meaning how you intend to communicate with your target audience. In this section of the brief, you explain how the tone of voice should be adapted to this specific project.

Another essential part of the briefing is this section, where you define the budget you are willing to invest for this project. It’s important to keep in mind that the budget should be proportional to the scope of your project . More time and more resources will require more budget.  

Timelines and milestones

A project timeline and milestones help guide the creative team as they work to achieve the overall objective of the project. Milestones cover multiple smaller tasks, and timelines show the interdependencies of tasks as well as define when milestones and the entire project should be completed. 

Stakeholders 

This part of a brief lists everyone included in the project and their exact roles. This can include internal team members and also external partners or agency members. 

Download a free creative brief checklist 

If you start working without a clear brief, it’s like driving with broken headlights at night. Sure, it’s still possible, but you’d have to drive slowly, and chances are high that you’ll veer off the street.

We know that it’s tempting to rush past the creation of creative briefs. Creative teams are usually itching to get started. They don’t want to waste time in the planning stages. But investing time in a good brief protects you from encountering serious problems later on down the road. Believe me, it is an investment that will pay off.

Want to have every important point from our guide on how to write a creative brief at one glance? You can download your free checklist right here:

Get the free creative brief checklist

How to write a creative brief .

When designing a creative brief, you don’t want to end up with a large folder full of information. Instead, you need a short and clear guiding document. Try to condense the information to a maximum of one or two pages. Structure it with bullet points for increased readability. Alternatively, you can create a PowerPoint presentation with one topic per slide.

Give background information

Every company and brand has a background story. This background information should be a vital part of the creative brief, regardless of the makeup of the actual team undertaking the project. In this section, share all the background information about your brand and the product or project at hand. 

In some cases, the creative tasks being assigned are part of a broader project. In such a situation, the creative brief should contain additional background information about the broader project as well as the current task that needs to be completed. This will help the creative team to understand the bigger picture. 

Be clear about the purpose of the brief 

Briefs are created with specific goals in mind. For creative briefs, the goal is to ensure that the essence of the project is communicated effectively to the creative team. So, it’s important to include a small section that explains the primary purpose of the creative brief. This will help the team or agency understand the scope of the project and what your company expects from the outcome. 

What is your USP/ key message 

What is the USP of your company? And based on that, what should be the key message for your project? The unique selling proposition of your campaign is that special feature or benefit that will attract the target audience. It is an offer that is irresistible. Additionally, the USP makes your brand distinct from the competition. It gives the target audience a reason to ditch other brands and prioritize your company. 

Find out what interests your audience the most – price, quality, reputation, or other features. Then, harness that interest to create the strongest USP for your campaign. 

Define your objectives 

How can your team meet your expectations if they don’t know them? The first step of any project should always be the definition of the objectives. Objectives are the fundamental scoresheet that will be used to evaluate the success of the project when it is over. 

The results your creative team or agency produces after completing a project should be weighed against the objectives communicated at the beginning. Therefore, the design brief serves to put everyone on the same page in order to avoid conflicts down the road. Ensure that all stakeholders agree with the objectives that are written in the brief before commencing the project.  

Describe your target audience

The objectives of the campaign relay expectations, but you and your team or agency will not produce these results by magic. Moreover, you cannot sell the message of the campaign to everyone. You will need to adapt your content for a specific target audience. 

To do this, you need to define and describe your target audience in detail. One way this can be done is by creating buyer personas . A buyer persona is a fictional character that represents a member of your ideal target audience.

Describe your market position and competitors

Another section of your creative brief should explain the position of your company or brand in the market. How do customers rate your products or services? While looking at your brand’s position in the market, you also need to assess your competitors – other businesses that offer similar products or services. 

This can be done with a SWOT analysis. In a SWOT analysis, you review internal and external factors to define your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The result of the analysis will help you figure out the position of your brand in the market. 

List all deliverables you need

You hired a creative team (whether in-house or an agency) for a reason. You expect them to complete a project and return certain deliverables to you. It’s easy to assume that they already know what’s expected, but this assumption can create a gap in communication. 

When creating a brief, list all of the concrete deliverables you expect the creative team to produce. Be as clear as possible when describing these assets. For instance, you can include a list of deliverables that reads somewhat like this: 

“Expected deliverables include a PDF of logo, Vector files for logo, and 3D mock up of brand logo.”

Describe your tone of voice 

Think of your brand as a personality. If it were a person, how would they act and speak? How should others, especially your target audience, perceive your brand. What impression do you want to leave in their heads? Try to come up with a few adjectives and attributes that describe your brand. 

Define your budget

Budgeting is important. Many managers omit this part because they want to keep the numbers confidential, while others address budgeting too late in the process. However, it’s essential to mention the budget in the creative brief. A budget is closely related to the relevance, scope, and amount of work expected to go into a project. 

When setting the budget for a project, consider the scope and skills required to complete the various tasks. Naturally, bigger projects require higher budgets. Plus, projects that require a high level of expertise and specialists often require a higher budget because specialists often charge above-average fees. 

Create a timeline with milestones

In this next step, you should propose a timeline with milestones for your creative project. After sharing the brief with the creative team, they can review the timeline and confirm that the tasks and milestones can be completed in the suggested timeframe. 

Creators appreciate clients and managers who set realistic deadlines for projects. So, to ensure that you are setting your timeline reasonably, consider the following factors:

• Define single tasks and estimate how long it will take to complete them.
• Identify task dependencies to avoid bottlenecks. 
• Bundle similar tasks together into milestones.
• Most projects have a final deadline by when the projects need to be published. Use this deadline to plan backwards and define all other milestones and tasks that way. 

Share your brief with important stakeholders

After you have outlined the details of your project, it’s time to share the brief with important stakeholders and collect their feedback. These stakeholders include everyone who has a role to play in the success of the project, whether within your team or outside of your company.

When done via email, sharing the brief and collecting feedback from all stakeholders can be a time-consuming and nerve-wracking task. That’s why you need a review and approval tool like Filestage . With Filestage, you can easily upload your brief and share it with all stakeholders in seconds. 

Then, stakeholders can view the file in their browser, leave comments directly on the file, and even discuss changes in the comment section. After the first review round, you can revise the brief and upload the new version. Once a stakeholder is happy they can approve the brief with just one click.   

Download our creative brief template 

You can download our creative brief template right here:

Get the free creative brief template

It’s a PowerPoint file. Each slide contains a major question you need to answer clearly. Furthermore, you’ll find a short explanation within the notes section of each slide that gives you further guidance.

To save an editable copy, follow these simple steps:

• Click “File” in the top-left corner
• Click “Make a copy”
• Choose your destination folder

Feel free to adapt our PowerPoint template to your own needs. Use your own logo or add slides where you want to bring in more details. When you’re done, you can share your creative brief in Filestage with your stakeholders to get feedback and approval.

Why do you need a creative brief? 

Some brands believe that a creative brief is unimportant if the managers can effectively communicate important details with the project stakeholders. But if you only communicate verbally, there’s nothing you can refer back to when the objectives of the project are not met and/ or results are unsatisfactory.  

Here are a few benefits that a creative brief offers to both you and the creative team:

The creative team/ agency

• A creative brief helps the team to better understand the purpose and objectives of a project.
• It lays out a plan to follow for achieving the goals of the project. 
• It helps the team understand the expectations of the client and therefore ensures success. 
• With a creative brief, creatives can stay accountable to both themselves and their client.
• It saves time that could be wasted on waiting for corrections or conflicting objectives. 

The client 

• The creative brief puts everyone on the same page by clearly defining expectations and requirements. 
• It serves as a means to communicate the expected results before a project commences. 
• A creative brief can be used to measure the success of a project.
• Creative briefs help to define a clear timeline and deadlines for projects.
• The results of a campaign are usually better when a creative brief is used.

Use cases for creative briefs 

A creative brief isn’t some huge task you should save only for big projects. A brief is useful for any marketing content you want to produce. You might not have considered using creative briefs for all of your content, but they can help you create anything from webpage copy to video projects.

You might find you need multiple, separate creative briefs – but when it comes to in-house content, you can use a creative brief like a style guide. When you’re producing regular blog articles or video content, your brief will save you time and ensure consistent content.

A creative brief can be used for different purposes, including as a: 

• Marketing brief to start your marketing campaigns
• Branding brief to define your brand assessment
• Project brief to kick off your projects
• Strategic brief to plan your next steps
• Event brief to start planning an event
• Logo brief to get started with the design process
• Company brief to share background on the organization
• Videographer brief to prepare a producer
• Team brief to get your team on board
• Media brief to start your media project

3 tips for creating a creative brief 

Knowing what should be in a creative brief is not enough to craft an effective one. Here are three tips that will help you draft useful briefs.  

Be specific

Be clear about what you aim to achieve at the end of the campaign. Use figures and statements to measure the project result. Establish the tone which you want to use to communicate with your target audience. Knowing what you want is indeed the first step in achieving it.

Keep it short

This is a brief after all, not a novel or a dictionary. Stick to the name, and be concise. Your brief cannot be effective if people cannot skim through and understand the background and objectives of the project. Mention the strategy you will use to complete the campaign but do not go into too much detail. Each paragraph of the brief should tackle one feature concisely.

Get feedback

After writing a creative brief, it is normal to wonder if the brief is clear enough and effective. Even Fortune-500 companies face this problem, but platforms like Filestage help you get feedback and approvals on your briefs from key stakeholders quickly and easily. 

[ensc title=”Online proofing hubspot en”] 

Five other creative brief templates 

Rather than creating a creative brief process from scratch, save time by starting with a template. Customizing a template allows you to create a more professional look for your creative brief, and it also provides you with quality-tested questions.

Creative brief template advertising by Milanote

Milanote offers a slick user-friendly design to help you organize all the elements of a creative brief. It allows you to create private templates with various boards and hierarchies for different levels within your team. You can collect all of your requirements in one secure place which helps to speed up tasks and keep everyone in your team updated.

Marketing creative brief template by 99 Designs

This creative brief from 99 Designs helps you to plan for the various elements of your needs, from color palettes to the style of your business. 99 Designs provides another simple template that won’t take long to complete and that you will find massively helpful in the long run.

Creative brief template by Smartsheet

The Smartsheet template for a creative brief allows you to list everything included in a design brief while maintaining simplicity. This template can be used for different kinds of projects while remaining effective and conveying relevance. Plus, the template is not restrictive, so you can take advantage of that feature to be more detailed when writing the brief.

Creative agency brief template by Hubspot

This template from Hubspot aims to keep your team motivated with an attractive creative brief. If you’re looking for something to inspire your creative team while helping them to understand the project, then the Hubspot template is a great choice.

Logo creative brief template by Your Creative Junkie

Although this template has been designed with a specific goal in mind, it’s actually a really useful tool for any creative brief. This brief has various sections so you can really get to grips with your needs. Moreover, it has an attractive design but is still a simple text template, so anyone can use it. A logo brief template is definitely a useful tool for creative project management .

Four creative brief examples 

Still not clear on how to make your own top-of-the-line creative brief?

Don’t worry; we’ve put together a selection of industry best practice creative briefs to help you!

PayPal creative brief example

Paypal’s creative brief has a really nice design and flow to it. It’s clearly in line with their style and content. It’s also not too busy, so you can scan the text quickly to remind yourself of the most important information.

Reebok creative brief example

This simple design highlights the important messages in the creative brief. You might also find bullet-pointed lists useful for quickly conveying key information. Keep your design brief and scannable with lists and sections like these.

Red Bull creative brief example

Red Bull has got this brief right by providing a short introduction to the company and then diving straight into the objectives of the project.

Something about this brief template from Doritos is different from the others. It does not have a creative design like the other ones. Instead, it is short and straight to the point. The brief focuses on the primary benefit of the project to the target audience.

Conclusion 

Writing good briefs can be time-consuming when you start from scratch. That’s why you should download our template and checklist to save time and create even better briefs. Although briefs can require participation from every project stakeholder, they are still worth every bit of effort in the long run.

And if you need to get fast and precise feedback on your briefs (or any other assets), you can share them with Filestage . On the centralized platform, stakeholders can leave comments and collaborate on files in real-time, helping you meet all your deadlines . 

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Top 10 Creative Brief presentation templates

Having a Creative Brief template is crucial as it streamlines the creative process, ensuring that all team members are on the same page and working towards a common goal. It is widely used by marketing teams, advertising agencies, and design professionals to outline project objectives, target audience, and key messaging. Utilizing a presentation template, like the examples below, simplifies the process even further by providing a visually appealing and easy-to-follow format, saving time and effort while maintaining a professional appearance.

What makes a good Creative Brief?

• Clear objectives: Define the project's purpose, goals, and desired outcomes to ensure everyone understands the direction and expectations.
• Target audience: Identify the specific demographic or group the project is aimed at, including their needs, preferences, and pain points.
• Key messaging: Outline the main messages or themes that should be conveyed throughout the presentation, ensuring consistency and clarity.
• Visual elements: Incorporate relevant images, graphics, and design elements that support the content and enhance the overall aesthetic of the presentation.
• Timeline and deliverables: Specify deadlines, milestones, and required assets to keep the project on track and ensure all team members are aware of their responsibilities.

1. Tome's Creative Brief Template

The Tome's Creative Brief Template is ideal for launching campaigns, helping to define business context, objectives, and creative strategies effectively. It is most useful during the initial planning stages of a project.

• Slides: Includes sections for business context, audience analysis, and creative strategy.
• Format: Accessible online via Tome app, exportable in PDF or Microsoft PowerPoint format.
• Pricing: Free to use on the Tome.app.

2. Partnership Marketing Plan Template

The Partnership Marketing Plan Template is perfect for businesses looking to showcase collaboration potential, especially when planning joint marketing efforts.

• Slides: Highlights social media impact, case studies, and market share.
• Format: Available in Google Slides and PowerPoint formats.
• Pricing: Free to download.

3. Creative Brief Presentation Template

The Creative Brief Presentation Template is designed for presenting business strategies and implementation plans, ideal for corporate briefings and strategic meetings.

• Slides: 16 editable pages with a well-layered structure.
• Format: Supports CANVA, INDD, INDT, and IDML formats.
• Pricing: Specific pricing information is not publicly available. Users may purchase the template on Creative Market.

4. Social Media Campaign Creative Brief for Company Template

The Social Media Campaign Creative Brief for Company Template is tailored for outlining social media marketing campaigns, best used in the planning phase to define goals and target audience.

• Slides: Detailed sections for company overview, marketing goals, and platforms.
• Format: Available in PowerPoint format.
• Pricing: Specific pricing details are not publicly available. Users may obtain the template through SlideTeam’s process.

5. One-pager Creative Brief PowerPoint Template

The One-pager Creative Brief PowerPoint Template is ideal for succinctly presenting project summaries or business ideas, perfect for quick overviews in high-stake meetings.

• Slides: Compact layout for essential project or business information.
• Format: Compatible with PowerPoint, Google Slides, and Keynote.
• Pricing: Specific pricing information is not publicly available. Users may buy the template through SlideModel.

6. BU459 Creative Brief Template

The BU459 Creative Brief Template is excellent for marketing teams crafting campaign strategies, providing a comprehensive framework to detail the campaign’s background and objectives.

• Slides: Detailed structure covering campaign essentials.
• Format: Typically available in PDF format for easy sharing.

7. Creative Brief Presentation Template

The Creative Brief Presentation Template is perfect for showcasing business strategies to clients, especially when detailing new project implementations.

• Slides: 12 fully editable pages.
• Format: Compatible with Canva and Adobe InDesign.
• Pricing: Specific pricing information is not publicly available. Users may buy the template on Creative Market.

8. Creative Brief Presentation Template

The Creative Brief Presentation Template from TemplatesForest, this is ideal for detailed business presentations, offering a structured layout for strategy and execution.

• Slides: 12 pages with editable layouts.
• Format: Available in CANVA and Adobe InDesign formats.

9. New Product Creative Brief Worksheet with Detailed Description Template

The New Product Creative Brief Worksheet with Detailed Description Template is designed for product development teams to define new product details, perfect for brainstorming and initial product concept meetings.

• Slides: Comprehensive layout for product planning.
• Pricing: Specific pricing information is not publicly available. Users may access the template through SlideTeam’s process.

10. Ombar Creative Brief Template

The Ombar Creative Brief Template is suitable for creating clear and detailed project briefs, ideal for managing client projects and expectations.

• Slides: Features master page layouts and customizable pages.
• Format: Designed for Adobe InDesign with resizable vector elements.

Create the best presentations with Tome!

At Tome , we understand the importance of crafting polished and engaging presentations, especially when it comes to Creative Brief templates. Our AI-powered platform is designed to help you develop structured starting points, integrate web references, and ensure your final output is both compelling and clear. Professionals across various fields, from sales to marketing, can benefit from Tome's innovative AI capabilities, enhancing productivity and making your ideas shine.

Why not give Tome a try? Sign up for free and start shaping your ideas with our versatile presentation tool.

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Creative Brief Presentation Template

Creative Brief Presentation

Transcript: Everything in one place Clears confusion between artist and company Easy to make What's The Point? What is the point? The ten main topics that need to be answered. What does it Consist of? What does it consists of? Background -Background on the client Overview -overview of the project Drivers -What is driving the project Background Overview Drivers Audience Competitors Tone Message Audience - Who is the audience (age, gender, etc.) Competitors -Who are the competitors, what do they do different Tone -What is the target feeling Message -What is being said with this project People Visuals Details People - Members of the team Visuals - What kind of imagery should be used Details - all project details listed The process to writing a creative brief is not complicated, but to make a good one takes time and preparation. What is the process? What is the process? When preparing to write a creative brief do research on: How to prepare Preparation Who the client is What the client does What is the client's goal Who is the client's audience The investment is not excessive, but it is present. These are the recommended requirements: The investment required Time Preferred recording medium (Pencil&Paper or Computer) At least an hour to thoroughly answer all questions Effort

Creative Brief

Transcript: Pink Celebrity Jeans Target Market: Women 18-28 Advertising Objective: Put Celebrity Pink Jeans in the evoked set. Problem: blend in with the crowd Means-End Strategy Attribute: Colored Jeans Benefit: Unique Jeans Personal Value: Confident and Bold Message Strategy Celebrity Pink Jeans ARE fashionable, unique, and affordable Encounter: post graduation is out looking for a job Final Commercial Solution: affordable fashion forward jeans that let you stand out Affective Emotional Advertising Shelby, 22 Music Appeal Finishing up college Embarking on a new journey Social always doing something Fear of being insignificant Strives to create a life of her own. Creative Brief Leverage Point Interaction: See Celebrity Pink Jeans in store window Celebrity Pink Jeans are fashionably affordable Slice of Life Pink- Raise Your Glass

Transcript: So you're a high school senior... and graduation is just around the corner. Which leaves you pondering one of the MOST IMPORTANT DECISIONS you will ever make. So... you better not mess it up, huh? No need to worry. This is where the comes in. We know that there are other schools out there... and they might like great schools. Offering outstanding academics ...and much more. BUT. We can't help but wonder How many schools offer ALL of these things, and at the HIGHEST level? Just. One. I ILL NI Because why have one merit when you can have them ALL? The sky is the limit. And at the University of Illinois... you can reach it. COLLEGE seem [thrilling] athletics SOCIAL & DIVERSE community

Transcript: Created by Laura Beattie, Tayler Buchanan, Chelsea Cameron-Fikis and Maria Kampen for Trudy Goldenberg "April showers bring the sun and her flowers" Overview Overview Rupi Kaur is a New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of the poetry collection milk and honey. Her second collection of poetry, the sun and her flowers, is set to release May 28, 2018, published by Simon & Schuster. Goals: Goals Build on the success of milk and honey while still presenting this book as a unique offering Keep and increase current audience Promote the sun and her flowers by leveraging social media and the Rupi Kaur brand Cultivate awareness and excitement across social media platforms about this new collection Encourage sales and attendance at associated events Target Audience Audience Female 18-29 Urban Educated or pursuing education Interested in art/literature #aesthetic #relatable Messaging Messaging The idea that poetry can be accessible to anyone, not high-brow but still refined (#relatable) Feminism, activism and other social justice issues This is an important work Visual as well as written excellence Nurturing Feminist Relatable Inclusive Accessible Voice / Tone Voice/Tone Visuals Challenges Challenges 1. Literary critics/ being accepted into literary community 2. Competitors entering the niche "instapoet" 3. Exceed/match international success of first collection "milk and honey" 1. Rupi Kaur is classified as the original "Instapoet," created her own niche 2. Large fan base worldwide including many celebrities 3. Status as an "influencer" on social media Competitive Positioning Competitive Positioning Social media posts (Simon & Schuster and Rupi Kaur) Media pitches Media kit Print advertisments Rupi Kaur reading Livestream reading (FB & Instagram) Book launch event Deliverables Deliverables April 19-29 Design book cover Craft social media campaign Design print advertisements April 30-May 6 Launch social media campiagn (ongoing) Begin media pitches (TV, radio, print) May 6-13 Launch print advertisements May 14-20 Media kit (press release about upcoming readings/launch party) May 21-27 Live stream reading on Instagram Interviews on television/radio talk shows *May 28 Book launch party and release date Schedule Schedule Rupi Kaur, the original instapoet, is influencing the next generation of poety with her fearless writing and unique work. This plan will take the tone, content and ethos behind her poetry and make this her most successful work yet. Summary Summary

Transcript: WHO The People's Car Project Age Range: 20-30 something Sex: Female & Male Education: Mid-High Education & Professional Characters: Fun-seeker, Self-oriented, Open to new ideas By engaging and motivating people to create their dream car with the company throughout the campaign. Volkswagen: The People's Car Insight: High Competition in the automobile industry Hard to differentiate between VW to other foreign car companies Consumers become more active People GET Creative Brief Volkswagen BY TO To Illustrate: People has the influences on the company People has the influences on the product design Volkswagen like to listen and respond to the people Product by Emily Fung

Creative brief

Transcript: Creative Brief However, Sharpie realized that it' would have to undertake a millennial makeover to remain competitive and relevant in the ever increasingly saturated office supplies market. Why are we doing this job? so we have to decide on an appropriate advertising objective for a new campaign What would we like to achieve? and build awareness for other Sharpie products besides the black Sharpie Fine point marker Thoughts and feelings Sharpie is a well established brand with loyal customers and has control of the market. • Current Sharpie perceptions: Permanent Black Dull • Sharpie users associate the black permanent marker with the brand. Although the black marker is essential in the mind of consumers for mundane tasks like moving and projects, it is not viewed as a creative outlet. This Advertising Campaign is designed to motivate our target audience to “Uncap” their ideas and passion to share them with the world. We want to inspire people to express their feelings through the use of the Sharpie permanent marker. Television will be used as the primary medium because of its broad reach and its popularity with retailers. Sharpie is a tool that facilitates creative process. Sharpie’s addition of new colors transcends the brand from a practical permanent marker to a creative outlet. No creation is too big or too small for Sharpie markers. Overview Sharpie discontinued use of its current advertising This means were going to continue to emphasize on the strengths of our advertising in the past, and continue to create new clever ads to continue creating revenue. Positioning Nitty Gritty Details Sales will be the measurement used to evaluate the advertising campaign – Sales increase of Sharpie’s color permanent marker Perception will also be used to measure success Market research will be conducted following the advertising campaign Perception should shift from dull and boring to fun and creative Questions? Strategy A young audience who: #1 permanent marker worldwide with nearly 50% share Anh Nguyen Stephanie Perez Jack Rosenthal Steven Pezzuti Sharpie markers are essential for: Creative expression Moving Leaving notes Through this ad Through using things encountered in everyday life,the importance of Sharpie will be apparent. This advertising campaign shows users what they will be able to do with the product and how it will enhance the creative process and their life. Attribute Benefit – Deadline: April 23, 2012 Budget: $9.5 million $5 million during Primetime TV programming $2.5 million during Saturday morning cartoons targeting a younger market $2 million during People's Choice Awards Advertising Campaign Message “Take the age-old art of self-expressive doodling to a new level”-Carl Nichols “Start something” creative Sharpie allows for the artsy generation to be themselves and express their art for everyone to see. Whom do we need to reach with the ad campaign? Target audience “Take the age-old art of self-expressive doodling to a new level” -Carl Nichols “Start something” creative Sharpie allows for the artsy generation to be themselves and express their art for everyone to see. The advertising campaign created seeks to spark creativity in its target audience. • The audience should feel emotionally compelled to have a brighter more fun life. • The perception of dullness needs to be changed. – Sharpie is no longer just a black permanent marker Strategy Resonance Behavioral Outcome Furthermore, we want consumers to consitently choose Sharpie for their permanent marker, highlighting, and fine point needs. Newell Rubbermaid, (owner of sharpie) spends about 9.5 million dollars annually on advertising and marketing. This has successfully created a 97% brand awareness rating for Sharpie markers. SHARPIE Objectives is media savvy, loves being creative is an impression maker. Measures Strategy Where does Sharpie stand? We aim to reach Sharpie users on an emotional level. We do this by showing pictures of artists and their sharpie marker art to create a connection with the customer. Medium INCREASE SALES!!! Background

Transcript: The Organizational Purpose Promote positive body imageEncourage hope and help seeking through stories and case studies Provide an information channel for sufferers of eating disorders The Project Objectives "The Foundation is a community based charitable organization that supports eating disorder sufferers and their carers through direct financial relief, advocacy and lobbying, awareness campaigns, health promotion and early intervention work, and professional training in primary and secondary schools." Improve our ability to manage the annual survey Increase overall response rates for the survey Improve the quality of data gathered It is a blue print, a guide, even a source of inspiration. It details our objectives, audience/community, message or utility, the context in which we’ll engage, timing and budget. In short, the what, who, where, when. The brief is the what we are doing. The creative is the how. Project brief able to make us understanding of what the client really wants. A project brief contains the following elements which are organizational purpose, project purpose, project objectives and target market. Creative brief objective should always be clear and specific. Never ambiguous or overloaded. Project Purpose Product or Service Problem/Challenge Snapshot Role of communication Target audience/community Current beliefs Insight that reveals how we can motivate them What category conventions can we challenge Driving brand idea What is the press release that describes the outcome Where in the brief did the creative come from Creative Brief Project Brief

Transcript: FAM Creative Briefs May 2, 2011 Why do we use creative briefs? - provide information - provide direction - way to put clients needs in a clear format others can understand and interpret What is Creative looking for? Ideal information in a brief. information, information, information don't assume looking at CBs in a creative way why they're important Account perspective one offs vs campaigns over looked information wording of questions assumptions new creative briefs one form vs multiple feedback on what to include in new brief Use it or lose it - CB how to's C&P Start ups Creative briefs and PM's PMF

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11 Best Design Brief Templates to Use in 2024

Praburam Srinivasan

Growth Marketing Manager

July 24, 2024

Creative agencies receive dozens of creative design requests daily. Each project has different goals, deliverables, specifications, and timelines, and much of this information may be scattered across various communication threads, emails, and documents. Project managers centralize this information using documents called design briefs .

The design brief outlines the goals and requirements of a design project. It helps everyone involved in the design process stay on the same page. 

However, creating a design brief from scratch requires some effort. That’s why using design brief templates helps kickstart your design projects. 

We have listed the 11 best design brief templates that you can use. 

What Are Design Brief Templates?

What makes a good design brief template, 1. clickup design brief template, 2. clickup design brief whiteboard template, 3. clickup creative brief whiteboard template, 4. clickup creative and design template, 5. clickup creative brief document, 6. clickup graphic design template, 7. clickup web design template, 8. clickup design ideation template, 9. clickup design board template, 10. clickup design review template, 11. clickup graphic design advanced template, choose the right template to elevate your design process.

Design brief templates are pre-defined frameworks for capturing all the essential elements and critical information related to a design project. They act as a starting point for creating an exhaustive design brief and ensure information is presented clearly and concisely. 

A design brief template helps designers and other key stakeholders in a design project streamline their workflow and access necessary details whenever needed.

A good design brief template makes setting a solid foundation for a design project easier. Here are some of the key attributes of a good design brief template:

• Comprehensive structure: A good design brief should cover all the design project elements in detail to avoid confusion or ambiguity. For instance, a well-structured web design brief template would have sections to capture information about the target audience, project scope, project duration, technical requirements, and design preferences
• Clarity: The design brief template should be simple and easy for stakeholders and other team members to understand
• Flexibility: A flexible design brief template allows you to tailor your brief according to various types of work, client requirements, and project scales. This allows you to adapt your design brief to impromptu changes without overwhelming your team. For instance, templates can have optional sections such as notes, competitive analysis, the scope of work
• Organized structure : Your design template should be easy to fill out and neatly structured using clean layouts, bullet points, sections, columns, and headings. A well-organized design brief template avoids uncertainties and facilitates smooth communication among stakeholders and designers

11 Design Brief Templates to Use in 2024

The right design brief template makes navigating the complexities of a design challenge easy. However, templates vary based on project requirements, types, and specifications.

Look at these 11 design brief templates that will meet your varied requirements. 

If you need help effectively communicating the details of your design projects with your creative and marketing departments, the ClickUp Design Brief Template is just what you need. It offers a well-structured layout that allows you to clearly define details about your projects, such as goals, objectives, timelines, and direction.

The template can be shared with your creative team and other stakeholders to help them effectively execute a design project. It helps them stay focused and prioritize tasks for better and faster outputs. 

Key features

• Record essential information such as goals, direction, scope, and timeline using a neatly structured framework
• Visualize the duration for each task with Timeline View
• Manage every detail of your project with the help of customizable sections that can be adapted to any type of project

Ideal use case

The template helps project managers at creative or marketing agencies organize project requirements, assign tasks, and set clear milestones for each client project. It provides a structured approach for seamless communication and project execution.

💡 Pro Tip: Use a design project management tool like ClickUp Design to work on design ideas, collaborate, and manage tasks—all in one place. It also offers several customizable design templates tailored to any use case in your design process. Use the power of AI, automation, and much more to deliver flawless designs. 

The ClickUp Design Brief Whiteboard Template is an excellent tool for project briefing meetings. The template contains sections to map client requests, objectives, references, marketing directions, and more. This visual framework can be used for project kick-off meetings to ensure everyone is working towards the same goal.

This template allows you to leverage the ClickUp Whiteboard by giving you a pre-defined structure for effective collaboration. Whiteboards act as a digital canvas, enabling you to brainstorm with your team. And with this ClickUp template, you can turn ideas into tasks from your whiteboard. Plan out project timelines, deliverables, and objectives interactively and collaboratively with the flexibility of a whiteboard.

• Map out client objectives, references, marketing directions, and more using sections
• Use the visual framework to explain ideas and concepts during project kickoff meetings
• Monitor the progress of different tasks and sub-tasks with the Board View
• Work collaboratively with stakeholders and other team members using collaboration features for better design outputs
• Plot tasks along a flexible timeline using Gantt View

Project managers can use this template to visually organize different project elements and communicate them effectively to team members across multiple departments. It offers a collaborative space for team members to brainstorm ideas, offer suggestions, and map out the project requirements.

The ClickUp Creative Brief Whiteboard Template is a visual tool for brainstorming and planning the different aspects of a creative design project. It helps you create a clear action plan and manage all the project-related tasks in a single place.

The template offers a bird’ s-eye view of the entire creative process, helping plan, execute, and track the various tasks involved in the project. It covers information on the target audience, tone and style, brand guidelines, and deliverables. 

• Create tasks within the template and assign each one a custom status like Client Review, Complete Development, In Progress, and Final Approval
• Use priority labels, tagging, and nested sub-tasks to create a well-structured creative brief with ease
• Add attributes such as Responsibility, Involvement, Session Type, End Date, and Email to organize different tasks using Custom Fields 
• Describe the creative brief process and set the context for what’s to follow in the document using the Start Here View

This template is excellent for marketing and advertising professionals to outline the details involved in a creative project. It is also ideal for project managers leading creative projects. They can help multiple departments, such as design, copywriting, and strategy, to brainstorm and ideate in one place. 

Read more : How to Write A Creative Brief in 8 Steps

The ClickUp Creative and Design Template streamlines request intake, planning, and execution of all your design tasks. You can also use the template to brainstorm ideas, assign tasks, set deadlines, and track progress. This ensures that every aspect of your design process is thoroughly planned, improving project efficiency and clarity.

• Give a quick overview of the design process to those using the template with the help of the Welcome View
• Allow stakeholders to submit creative requests using the Form View
• Organise and manage design assets such as graphics and multimedia files using asset management

The template is a useful tool for creative directors and design project managers to outline campaign goals and kick-off project meetings. It’s highly effective for facilitating creative brainstorming and showcasing concepts for feedback and approval from stakeholders.

The ClickUp Creative Brief Document Template is a must-have for aligning stakeholders and the creative design page to deliver results for any creative project successfully. Its well-defined sections help you organize project information in an easy-to-grasp format. You can also use the template to set timelines and budgets to ensure the project is completed on time without going overboard on costs.

• View your work in multiple ways, such as the List, Gantt Chart, Workload, or Calendar view. This allows you to view your workload and visualize all your tasks along a flexible timeline
• Use custom fields in the template to track things like your budget or the key demographics of your target audience
• Streamline the review and approval process using @mentions and comments to tag team members and assign them tasks and action items

Marketing managers can use the ClickUp Creative Brief Document to provide team members with comprehensive project guidance. The template has sections on target audience, budget allocation, deliverables, and timelines for every project, ensuring each team member knows what to produce and when.

If you are a graphic designer, you may have struggled with ineffective project briefs that make it rather challenging to understand client expectations. Managing design projects is tricky if details are scattered across channels like email, chat, or other documents.

The ClickUp Graphic Design Template perfectly organizes such scattered information using a single, standardized framework. It allows you to keep all project-related information in one place, saving time and effort.

This template addresses most challenges graphic designers likely face when managing multiple requests. It helps them stay accountable and adhere to timelines.

• Enable your team to share real-time updates and contribute their insights or provide feedback using collaboration features
• Organize all your design-related tasks under different lists, such as project planning, concept development, design creation, or review and approval, using the List View
• Import your work stored in external tools such as editors, cloud storage, or design apps in no time with the Import View
• Use the Gantt View to see all your tasks along a flexible timeline. Prioritize your tasks and stay on track with project deadlines

Lead designers and creative heads can use the template to manage the graphic design process from conception to delivery. It is handy for documenting essential information such as color schemes, typography options, and example images, which are vital in graphic design projects.

💡 Pro Tip: Use a comprehensive design brief as a critical reference point to help graphic designers understand how their work addresses project specifics. This is essential to streamlining the graphic design workflow and avoiding ambiguity regarding the design requirements.

The ClickUp Web Design Template is a great way to manage the multiple facets of web design, such as UX design, content management, visual design, and optimization. Use this template to plan your web design process meticulously by adding tasks, descriptions, and priorities for each project stage.

The template also allows you to manage your team’s workload and effectively allocate resources so your teammates can handle multiple design requests.

• Use Custom Field attributes such as Industry, Email Address, Output Drive, Purpose, and Contact Phone Number to easily visualize important information regarding projects
• Track the time spent on different tasks and amp up efficiency
• Create visual representations of websites using the Board View
• Leverage Design Capacity View to see how much work is being handled by your designers and how much more they can take up

This template is ideal for web designers to design workflow, track tasks, and collaborate with clients and developers. Project managers leading web design projects can use this to plan out the project, assign tasks, set deadlines, and monitor progress.

Struggling to put together all the different design ideas from your team into impactful solutions?

The ClickUp Design Ideation Template is ideal for a fruitful brainstorming session. It is structured to help you capture and categorize your team’s ideas effortlessly. All you need to do is add your teammates to the template and enable them to work collaboratively on identifying potential solutions.

• Assign custom statuses, such as open or closed, for every idea to track their progress
• Organize different ideas by their owners or other categories using custom fields. This helps designers easily visualize the design process
• Use the Getting Started Guide View to describe the design ideation process
• Visually represent the ideation process using the Design Ideation Diagram View

Design heads can use the design brief template to add some structure to the ideation process. It is a visual aid that helps you neatly categorize ideas, suggestions, and other inputs during an ideation activity.

💡 Pro Tip: Using creative project management software that combines traditional features with advanced functionalities can help design teams stay creative and avoid bottlenecks, resulting in a quicker and more efficient design process.

The ClickUp Design Board Template offers a single space where everyone can collaborate on design ideas and visualize different types of content. It acts as a centralized source for you to upload design files, mockups, wireframes, and images so that everyone can view these assets and provide real-time feedback using comments and annotations.

• Save important information about your design projects using custom fields such as Design Links, Strategy Documents, Design Stages, and Approval
• Alert users to complete all activities before changing the task statuses using the Dependency feature
• Use the Priority View to plan your tasks and resources according to their urgency

Creative and design teams can use the design board template to visually represent and explain complex concepts and ideas quickly. It makes it easier to share ideas, and once the ideas are finalized, they can be converted into tasks with a few simple clicks. 

The ClickUp Design Review Template provides a streamlined way to organize and document your design review process. It can be shared with your team to get feedback and identify potential risks or errors. The most significant advantage is that the template offers a consistent process for approving your designs.

• Divide the review process into different stages and use custom statuses to denote the progress of each stage
• Record your screen with ClickUp Clips to explain design concepts and add them to the design review template for easy access
• Edit your designs in real-time with your team members to ensure all of them are on the same page
• Add comments on the template and use @mentions to assign each comment to the appropriate team member

Design teams can use this template to centralize feedback, iterate on designs, and collaborate effectively. This is also an excellent tool for project managers to review the design process, invite stakeholders, and track progress with custom statuses. 

The ClickUp Graphic Design Advanced Template is customizable according to your project requirements. It provides all the tools you need to foster collaboration and ensure the successful execution of graphic design projects. This simple-to-use template manages complex graphic design projects with advanced features and requirements.

• Create better workflows for the graphic design process using customizable workflows
• Use custom statuses to understand the different stages of the design project
• Stay updated whenever a change is made to the design tasks with the notifications feature 

The template is a good choice for design teams to improve their workflow. It is effective in scenarios where graphic designers must focus on creating diverse collateral requiring immense attention to detail.

Design templates are a great way to simplify creating standardized processes for each request. However, choosing the right template for your specific use case can be slightly challenging. 

A well-rounded list of templates like this one and ClickUp’s repository help you make informed choices.  Sign up for free to learn how ClickUp can fast-track your creative process in various other ways!

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Creative Writing in Crisis?

Creative Writing Studies Conference

Call for Papers/Presentations

November 15-17, 2024

Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA

Submit: https://forms.gle/rEppuokrzkfRaKiH7

CALL: Creative Writing in Crisis?

The Endgame special issue of The Chronicle Review (2020) begins, “The academic study of literature is no longer on the verge of field collapse. It’s in the midst of it.” As scholars, students, and practitioners of creative writing, who share offices, hallways, academic buildings, and teaching duties with our friends in literary studies, it is difficult to not feel “the collapse” coming for us, if not upon us, already. Add to the mix the closure of small, independent literary magazines, publishers, and distributors, the explosion of AI in the university and in creative professions, political unrest both on and off the college campus, and we might announce our own “Endgame” crisis. 

What does it mean for a field of study to be in crisis? In many ways, creative writing as a discipline is currently in a state of crisis. Questions about the future of humanities, the allocation of funding, and even the advent of AI call into question the place of creative writing, as well as the arts more broadly, within the university. Outside of academia, large language models purport to write, human writers unions win over AI exploitation, and media coverage of genocide twists the language of empathy to turn victors into victims.

However, in other ways, the domain of creative writing is one from which we can respond to and even address crises that students, faculty, and the public face in this rocky political landscape. For instance, how can creative writing be a part of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives? How might the popularity of creative writing courses help English departments, and the humanities overall? How do interdisciplinary approaches help creative writing to thrive? 

If creative writing is in crisis, perhaps we may point to why, and to how we can help keep the ship of the field and its art afloat. But if creative writing isn’t in crisis, why does this idea exist in the first place, and how might it be better contextualized in the larger landscape, both within and beyond academia? We seek papers that offer a wide spectrum of voices and perspectives on this theme.

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