I spent a decade as a designer before I ever sat on the other side of the table. The first time I hired a creative agency for my own project, I understood — really understood — something that had eluded me for years: clients aren't being difficult. They're being scared.
Commissioning creative work is genuinely terrifying if you're not a creative yourself. You're about to hand over significant money to someone who speaks a different professional language, and you're going to have to judge work you don't fully understand. The brief is supposed to protect you from this uncertainty, but most briefs make it worse.
If you want to write briefs that clients actually respond to, you need to understand what they're looking for. And it's probably not what you think.
They Want to Feel Heard
The most common complaint clients have — and I've heard this dozens of times now — is that designers don't listen. They come in with preconceived ideas, they hear what they want to hear, and the brief reflects their interpretation rather than the client's actual needs.
This perception often isn't fair. Designers do listen; they just listen like designers. They filter information through their expertise, translating business problems into design solutions automatically. By the time they write the brief, they've already processed the raw input into something more useful.
The problem is that clients can't see that processing. They see their words go in, and different words come out. From their perspective, it looks like you weren't paying attention.
The fix is surprisingly simple: show your work. When you interpret a client's requirement in your brief, explain the interpretation. "You mentioned wanting to appeal to a younger audience. We're interpreting this as users aged 25-40 who are comfortable with digital products but time-poor." Now the client can confirm or correct your understanding, and more importantly, they can see that you heard them.
This small addition transforms briefs from mysterious outputs into collaborative documents. Clients feel like partners in the process rather than spectators to it.
They Want Certainty About What They're Getting
Designers tend to resist specificity in briefs. We prefer to preserve creative latitude, to avoid boxing ourselves into solutions before we've fully explored the problem. This is sound creative practice, but it's also deeply unsettling for clients.
When a client reads "We'll develop a distinctive visual language for the brand," they don't feel excited about the creative possibilities. They feel anxious. What does distinctive mean? How will they know if it's working? What if they hate it?
Clients don't want creative freedom. They want creative certainty with room for surprise.
The most effective briefs I've received as a client were those that gave me concrete handholds while preserving space for creativity. "We'll explore three distinct visual directions, each referencing the mood boards we aligned on. You'll choose one to develop further, with two rounds of refinement." Now I know what's coming. I know what decisions I'll need to make and when. The creative work can still go anywhere, but the process is predictable.
This isn't about limiting your creativity. It's about creating a structure that allows clients to trust your creativity. They can't appreciate the destination if they're terrified of the journey.
They Want to Know What's Expected of Them
Here's something designers rarely consider: clients don't know how to be clients. Unless they commission creative work regularly, they've never done this before. They don't know when they should give feedback versus when they should trust your expertise. They don't know what kind of feedback is helpful versus what kind makes everything worse.
A good brief tells clients what their role is. Not in a condescending way, but in a genuinely helpful way. "During the concept phase, we'll need your input on direction rather than execution details. We'll ask you which approach feels right for the brand — save detailed feedback for the refinement phase."
This kind of guidance feels presumptuous to many designers. Who are we to tell the client how to do their job? But clients are often grateful for it. They want to be good at this, and they don't know how.
I remember receiving a brief that included a short section called "How to Review Creative Work." It walked me through what to look for at each stage, what kind of feedback was most useful, and common pitfalls to avoid. I thought it might feel patronising. Instead, it felt like being handed a map before entering unfamiliar territory.
They Want Evidence That You Understand Their Business
Creative briefs tend to focus heavily on creative considerations and lightly on business context. This is understandable — we're creative professionals, not business consultants. But it creates a gap that makes clients nervous.
When I brief designers now, I'm always listening for evidence that they understand what's actually at stake. Not just the aesthetic requirements, but the business outcomes those requirements serve. A website isn't just a website; it's a sales tool that needs to convert at a certain rate to justify its cost. A brand identity isn't just a logo; it's an asset that needs to signal specific things to specific people.
Briefs that connect design decisions to business outcomes demonstrate a level of understanding that pure aesthetic briefs don't. "We're prioritising mobile performance because 70% of your traffic comes from phones, and your current mobile conversion rate is half your desktop rate." That sentence tells me you've done the research and you're solving the right problem.
You don't need an MBA to do this. You just need to ask why enough times during the discovery phase, and reflect those answers in the brief.
They Want a Reason to Trust You
Everything above ladders up to this: clients want permission to trust you. They want to hand over the problem and believe it will come back solved. But they can't do that blindly, so they look for signals.
Professionalism is a signal. A brief that's well-written, thoughtfully structured, and free of errors suggests someone who pays attention to details.
Confidence is a signal. A brief that takes clear positions, rather than hedging everything, suggests someone who knows what they're doing.
Transparency is a signal. A brief that acknowledges uncertainties and explains how you'll address them suggests someone who won't leave them with unpleasant surprises.
None of these signals guarantee good work. But they create the conditions for a successful project by establishing trust before the work begins. And trust, once established, makes everything easier — the feedback sessions, the revision rounds, the inevitable moments when something goes wrong.
The best brief I ever received as a client was notable for none of its creative ideas. What made it stand out was how clearly it demonstrated that the designer understood my anxiety and was systematically addressing it. Every section seemed designed to answer an unspoken worry.
By the time I signed off, I wasn't just approving a document. I was making a decision to trust someone. The brief had given me enough evidence to make that decision confidently.
That's what clients actually want: enough evidence to say yes.