A logo design brief should hold four decisions. It names the sentence a buyer should repeat about you, the businesses you get compared with, every place the mark has to work and what it must never look like. Many templates lead with your favourite colours and the logos you admire instead. That gets you a mark chosen on taste.
Search the question and most of the top results are templates. Playbook's guide says: "Provide examples of logos that you like or dislike." It also asks whether you want to be "modern and edgy or timeless and classic". 4over4's guide asks for three or four adjectives, a style of mark and three to five reference logos. It all looks thorough. Then the concepts come back, and everyone judges them by the same thing the brief asked for, which is what they like.
I'm not against reference logos. A designer learns from what you admire. I'm against a brief where taste is the main thing written down.
What should a logo design brief include?
A logo design brief should include four things before anything about style. First, the one sentence you want buyers to repeat about your business. Second, the five to ten competitors buyers compare you with, with their logos. Third, every place the logo must work, from a 16 pixel browser tab to a shop sign. Fourth, the symbols and looks the mark must avoid. Budget, deadline, files and who approves come last.
A brief full of favourites gets judged on favourites
Picture the review meeting. Three concepts are on the screen, and the brief on the table says "we like navy, we like clean, we love this logo from another company". So the room asks which concept feels most like navy and clean. Someone prefers the second one. Someone else's partner prefers the third. Nobody can say who is right, because the brief never said what the logo was for.
A taste brief also pushes the designer toward the category. Hand over five logos you admire from your own industry and you've shown the designer what your competitors look like, then asked for more of it. The result fits in. That's the problem. To me, a buyer who can't tell you apart from the next name on the list ends up deciding on price.
Start with the sentence buyers should repeat
Write one sentence that a buyer could say to a friend about you, and that they couldn't say about your nearest competitor. "They do bookkeeping for restaurants and answer the phone on Sundays" works. "Quality service with a personal touch" doesn't, because every firm in town would sign it.
This is the hardest line in the brief and the one most templates skip. Some come close with a one-line description of what you do. A description tells the designer your trade, and leaves out why a buyer would pick you over the firm down the road.
If you can't write it, stop. No designer can draw an answer to a question you haven't answered, and that work comes before the brief. It's what a brand strategist actually does.
Swap "logos you like" for the logos you're compared with
Some templates do ask about competitors, but as background. I'd move them to page one and make them the test. List the five to ten businesses a buyer weighs you against. Search for what you sell where you sell it, and take the names that come up. Paste their logos on one page at the same size.
That page tells the designer more than any mood board. It shows the colours and symbols the category already owns, which is where you shouldn't go. It also gives you a fair test later. A concept either stands out from that row or it doesn't.
List every place the mark has to work
Write down where people will actually meet your logo. A browser tab, a social profile circle, an invoice, a van, a stamp on a paper bag, a sign seen from across the road. Put them in order of how often a buyer sees each one.
This changes the design more than most owners expect. A business that lives on phone screens needs a mark that survives at icon size. A business that lives on a shopfront can carry more detail. Leave this out and you'll find out at the printer.
Write down what the mark must not look like
Every category has its clichés. Say you run an accounting firm. The obvious marks are a rising bar chart, a tick, a pair of initials in a serif. A designer working without a brief reaches for them first, which is why so many logos in one field look alike. It's the same reason logo design contest entries draw the category.
So name the clichés in the brief and rule them out. At discovery, a client of mine, an established retail business moving upmarket, told me it wanted to avoid literal symbols of its trade. At the first concept review, the owner's representative said the icon didn't represent the field. That's the moment a written brief earns its place. You can put the comment next to the decision and ask which one still stands. I told more of that story in how to choose between logo concepts.
Budget, files and sign-off still belong in the brief
They go at the end, and they matter. Give a budget range so the designer can scope honestly. Give the date behind the deadline, such as a launch or a trade fair, so the timeline can bend in the right place. Ask for the files you'll need, including a one-colour version and a small-size version.
Then name the person who approves the final logo. If that's you plus a partner, both of you sign the brief. A logo approved by one person and vetoed by another after three rounds can cost you a whole second round of fees.
Write your logo brief on one page tonight
- Write the sentence a buyer should repeat about you, and test it by asking whether your nearest competitor could say it too.
- Name the five to ten businesses buyers compare you with, and paste their logos side by side at one size.
- List every place the logo will appear, ordered by how often buyers see it.
- Name the symbols and colours your category overuses, and write that the mark must avoid them.
- Add your reference logos only if each comes with a reason that links back to step 1.
- Finish with a budget range, the real deadline, the files you need and the name of the person who signs off.
- Before the first concept review, read step 1 aloud and judge every concept against it.
Stuck on step 1? The Signal Check is a one-page self-check, emailed to you after you sign up.
