Most creative briefs read like a strange hybrid of a legal contract and a wish list. Written by committee, understood by no one, approved by someone who was not in the meeting. Then it lands on a designer’s desk and the back-and-forth begins. Three rounds of revisions later, you are back at square one because nobody actually agreed on what the thing was supposed to do in the first place.
This is not a niche problem. According to the Design Business Association, 30% of clients wish their design agency would ask more questions and dig deeper at the briefing stage. Which tells you something important: clients themselves know the brief was not good enough, but nobody stopped to fix it before the meter started running.
At Interlace Creative Print, we do not smile politely, take your money, and print something we know will not work. A bad brief leads to a wet rag of a product. So here is how to write one that actually gets you somewhere.
This is where most projects go wrong, and it happens before we are even involved.
Remote and hybrid working means your internal marketing team is often pulling in three different directions at once. One person is in the office trying to manage a product launch. Another is working from home at 11pm sending unapproved design feedback into a group chat. A third has “final sign-off” but has not read a single message in the thread.
The result? Your design partner is tracking a moving target. Every round of amends introduces a new opinion from someone who was not consulted at the start.
Fix it: Do not hand over a brief until your internal stakeholders have actually sat in the same room (or the same call) and agreed on what you are building, who it is for, and who has the final say. If your own team is not aligned, no designer on earth can save you from yourselves.
Clients often try to act like production managers. “I want it on 350gsm silk with a spot UV finish on the logo and a tri-fold with 5mm bleed.” That is fine if you genuinely know what you are doing. Most of the time, those instructions do not match the budget, the timeline, or the physical reality of what the finished piece needs to survive (a postbox, a trade show floor, a rain-soaked A-frame on a high street).
Our team has actual machine-level, grassroots production experience. We know what holds up, what fades, what warps, and what looks stunning on a screen but falls apart in someone’s hands.
Fix it: Tell us who you are targeting, what the asset needs to achieve, and when it needs to land. We will tell you exactly how it can physically be produced within your budget. That is what you are paying us for. The UK Government’s own guidance on commissioning creative agencies makes the same point: define your objectives and audience first, and let the specialists handle execution.
Some agencies love to flood clients with twelve mockups and twenty layout variations. It looks industrious. It fills a presentation deck. It makes the invoice feel justified.
It is also a massive waste of your time.
More options do not equal better design. They create a decision-making headache where you end up Frankensteining bits of route A with bits of route C, and the final result has no coherence at all. A strong creative partner should not make you hunt for a good idea in a haystack of mediocre ones.
Fix it: Expect two or three properly considered creative routes that genuinely answer the brief. Pick one. Refine it. Execute. If you want to see how this works in practice, look at our portfolio. Every project there started with a clear brief and a focused response, not a beauty parade.
Here is an uncomfortable truth: most print-on-demand sites and generic suppliers will look at a piece of artwork, realise it looks terrible or will not achieve anything meaningful, and print it anyway just to close the invoice. Why would they care? They will never see you again.
That is not how we operate. If your brand identity is wrong for the audience you want to attract, or your event collateral is going to end up in a bin because the messaging is off, we will tell you. Directly. Before it goes anywhere near a press.
The DBA’s briefing guide recommends building a relationship where your design partner has enough context to challenge assumptions. That only works if you pick a partner who has the confidence to push back, and you give them permission to do it.
Fix it: Look for partners who offer real consulting, not order-taking. If your supplier has never once told you “that will not work,” they are not protecting your interests. They are protecting their invoice.
Design-by-committee is how good ideas die slow, painful deaths. If six people all have “a few small tweaks,” you end up with a Frankenstein that nobody actually wanted.
Equally, vague feedback kills momentum. “Make it pop” is not feedback. “The headline needs to be more visible against the background at A1 scale” is.
Fix it: Nominate one person as the single point of contact for design feedback. Let them collect internal opinions, filter them, and communicate one consolidated response. This alone will cut your revision rounds in half and keep your project on budget.
A great campaign is not built on rigid corporate processes. It is built on real human trust and accountability. Keep it simple. Speak on a personal level. Align your team before you pick up the phone. Tell us what the thing needs to do and we will figure out how to make it happen.
That is how Interlace Creative Print has worked with everyone from Sony Music to local Croydon charities, and why clients keep coming back. We would rather have an honest ten-minute conversation at the start than a painful six-week revision cycle at the end.
Ready to brief us properly? Get in touch and let us show you how painless this can be.
