A strong logo design brief keeps your designer on the right track and makes the whole process faster and more direct. Whether the finished logo matches what you had in mind comes down, in large part, to the brief you hand over before any design work begins.
By the end of this guide you'll be able to write a logo brief that gives your designer everything they need to create the perfect mark for your company.
Why does a design brief matter?
The brief is the medium you use to communicate with your designer, so they understand exactly what you need. From it, they decide how to approach the work — the design style, the timeline and the budget. Spoken instructions are easy to misread; a complete logo brief cuts communication costs and makes both sides more efficient.
1. Your company background
A designer's job is to solve your logo problem — which means they don't yet know how your company runs, what you sell, or what your industry is like. But because a logo has to connect to your business, you need to get them up to speed on the basics quickly.
Describe your product, audience and industry
A good designer analyses your product, your customer base and your industry, then finds the threads that tie them together — which strengthens the connection between your company, its market and its customers. Describe the whole picture, starting broad and getting more specific.
For example: the company sells baby-care products; the flagship line is infant formula for ages 0–3; the target customers are women aged 30–45; the biggest competing brands are ABC and DEF.
The deeper you go, the better. The more detail you give, the clearer the picture in the designer's head — and the more ideas they'll have to work with.
Describe your brand values
Different brand values lead to different design styles, and your designer uses those values as a starting point. When you explain them, frame the direction with contrasting pairs — traditional vs. modern, professional vs. playful, young vs. mature. Those contrasts let the designer sketch out your company's overall image.
Provide your company name (and its short forms)
Giving your company name sounds obvious — so why call it out? Because most company names are long, and almost nobody puts the full legal name on a logo. So hand over the names you actually use day to day. "Man Kee Supermarket Ltd", for instance, might go by "Man Kee" or "Man Kee Mart". The same applies to any English short form — note down every usable or commonly used variant.
Provide your slogan
If your company (or you) has a strong, memorable tagline, it can be worked into the logo to make it more vivid and distinctive. Nike is the classic example — its "Just Do It" line often sits alongside the mark. If you only want the slogan to appear in certain situations, tell your designer up front.
2. Share the logo styles you like
Share logos or graphics you love
Sharing logos or graphics you love saves a huge amount of back-and-forth and gives you a firmer grip on where the logo is heading. It shortens design time and brings the result closer to what you pictured. When you pick your references, try to keep them in the same style family so you don't send the designer mixed signals.
Design style
Beyond the specific graphics or logos, the overall style matters just as much — old-school, 3D, flat, line-based and so on. If you're not sure what things are called, search online and save the types you like.
Colour
Colour is a crucial piece. It doesn't just affect the logo graphic itself — it shapes your entire brand image. Once the logo colours are locked, every piece of print your company produces should be designed around them to keep the brand consistent.
When you describe colour, never use vague words like "blue" or "red". There are a thousand blues and a thousand reds, and the designer has no way to gauge which one you mean. Use terms like "sky blue" or "grass green" — and a reference image is better still.
3. Set the timeline and budget
Design time
Design can move fast or slow — there's no fixed timeline. Most of a designer's time goes into analysing everything above, finding the elements that fit the brief, and combining them into a one-of-a-kind logo. Inspiration rarely arrives on the first try; it usually needs time to settle.
A typical logo takes anywhere from 5 to 7 days; if you want work at a full brand-design level, allow longer — around 15 to 20 days.
Design budget
A logo matters to most companies, which is why well-known designers charge a lot for one. Xiaomi's new logo, for example, reportedly cost 2.4 million RMB. Put another way: the better known a company is, the more a logo is worth to it. If your company turns over hundreds of millions — or even tens of millions — a year, would you really settle for a $1,000 logo? Probably not.