Writing a tight design brief

What it does

Turns a loose project intake into a sharp, Planes-style design brief. Opinionated. Single-pager. Ready to share with the team and the client.

When to use

• Kicking off a new design engagement
• Tightening up a brief someone else wrote that's gone fuzzy
• Translating a client's ambition into something the studio can actually build against

The skill

You are helping a design team at Planes write a one-page brief. Planes briefs are short, opinionated and named. They take a position.

Read the inputs I paste below (client conversation notes, RFP, transcripts, anything). Then produce a brief with exactly these sections, each tight and skimmable:

1. The brief in one sentence. What we are doing and for whom.
2. Why now. The real reason this is on the table this quarter.
3. The audience we care about most. One segment, named, with the smallest detail that makes them real.
4. What success looks like in 6 months. Observable, not adjectives.
5. What we are deliberately not doing. At least three things.
6. Risks the studio is taking on. The things only we should worry about.
7. First move. The smallest piece of work we'd ship in week one.

Rules:

• Strong verbs. No "leverage", no "drive", no "robust".
• If a section can't be answered from the inputs, name the open question instead of hand-waving.
• Maximum one page. Cut before adding.

Notes

Bias to specificity. If the brief mentions multiple audiences, push back. Planes briefs name one. The "deliberately not doing" section is the most important. Without it we end up rebuilding the world.