The client brief template: what to ask before you start

A job that starts badly almost always starts the same way: you said yes, the client is happy, and three days later you still have nothing you can open. The logo is a 400-pixel JPEG, nobody knows the delivery date, and the only useful information is in a two-minute voice note.

The brief exists to stop that. Not to look professional: to stop you grinding to a halt after two hours.

What a brief has to get you

A brief is not a satisfaction survey. It has one job: to let you start without asking another question. Anything that does not serve that makes the form longer and makes your client abandon it halfway.

The test is simple. For every question, ask: if I do not have this answer, am I blocked? If not, it comes out of the brief and becomes a conversation later, when it actually comes up.

The eight blocks that come up everywhere

Trades differ, the structure does not. Here is what a photographer, a developer, a designer and a vehicle wrapper all need, in the order it gets asked. Read it as a suggestion: we do not do your job, and the list that will suit you is the one you have cut down yourself.

1. Who the client actually is

Not just the name on the invoice. Who decides, who signs off, and who will answer you at four o'clock on a Tuesday. A job with two contacts who disagree with each other is the most expensive job of your year.

2. What they want, in their own words

One open question, only one, very broad: "describe what you want to end up with". You will learn more from those three lines than from ten checkboxes, because that is where the real subject appears, often in the last sentence.

3. The object, the medium, the format

This is the block that changes completely from trade to trade, and it is where a generic brief becomes a useful one. For a photo shoot it is the location and the number of subjects. For a website it is the number of pages and what already exists. For a wrap it is the make, the model and the year of the vehicle.

4. The physical constraints

Dimensions, no-go zones, output formats, the maximum weight of an image, the browser version still to be supported. These are the questions nobody thinks to ask, and they are the ones that make you start over.

5. What the client has to send

The vector logo, the copy, the photos, the credentials. Ask for them inside the brief, with a file upload field, not in a separate message. A file asked for by email arrives in an email, and emails get lost.

It is also the right place to say what you cannot work with. "A JPEG logo cannot be enlarged" is a sentence that saves you an awkward conversation later.

6. References and colours

Two or three examples of what they like, two or three of what they do not. The second is more useful than the first, and nobody asks for it.

For colours, do not leave a free text field. "Blue" means six things. Offer a list of named shades, or ask for an exact code.

7. The date

Not "whenever suits you". A date, or a range. And above all: the date of the event, if there is one, which is not the same as the delivery date they would like.

8. Whatever the form did not think to ask

One last open field, and somewhere to drop what goes with it. It is the one that catches nine out of ten special cases, and it is the first one people delete when they want to keep things short. Keep it.

One page, not three

A sixty-question brief does not get filled in. It gets abandoned at question twenty-two on a Sunday night, and you receive a half-empty form you then have to finish on the phone.

Twenty to thirty questions is the right size for most jobs. If you have more, two or three of them probably belong to a second round: what you will ask after showing a first proposal.

You write the brief once, not every time

This is the part most freelancers do backwards. They dig out the last email they sent a client, edit it, send it, and lose twenty minutes per job rewriting something that never changes.

Write your questions properly, once. Send the same link to every new client. The answers arrive in the same place, in the same order, and you know immediately what is missing.

That is exactly what Kalepio does: your questions become a form in your name, your client answers without creating an account, and it all reaches you in one piece. And if you want a starting point rather than a blank page, there is one per trade, here: the questions, the answers offered and the file formats accepted. They are suggestions, not standards. All of it can be rewritten, and it is meant to be.

Frequently asked questions

How many questions should a client brief have?

Twenty to thirty for most jobs. Past that the form gets abandoned rather than finished, and what is left over usually belongs to a second round of questions, asked after a first proposal.

What should you ask a client before starting a project?

Who decides and who signs off, what they want to end up with in their own words, the medium and its format, the technical constraints, what they have to send you, their references and colours, the date, and one open field for whatever the form did not anticipate.

Does the client need to sign the brief?

Not really. What matters is that the answers are written down, dated and readable by both of you: a record beats a signature on a document nobody reopens.

What is the difference between a brief and a quote?

The brief says what the client wants, the quote says what it costs and what is included. The client fills in the first, you write the second, and the second is almost always wrong when the first does not exist.