Ask any senior designer where projects go wrong and you will rarely hear “the software”. You will hear some version of: we started before we knew what we were making.
Three rounds of feedback on a landing page are usually not three design problems. They are one briefing problem, discovered slowly and expensively.
The good news is that the fix is small. A one-page brief that answers seven questions will do more for your turnaround time than any new tool, and it has become even more valuable now that many first drafts come from AI.
Why AI makes briefing more important, not less
When a designer receives a thin brief, they ask questions. When an AI tool receives a thin prompt, it quietly fills every gap with the statistical average: the most common layout, the most common stock image, the most common headline.
Figma’s 2025 survey found only 32% of designers trust AI output (Figma). A lot of that distrust is really a context problem. Give the tool the same information you would give a senior designer and the output improves dramatically.
The seven questions
1. What is this for?
State the business goal in one sentence. “Drive webinar registrations from existing customers” is a goal. “Make a banner for the webinar” is a task.
2. Who is it for?
Describe the person, not the segment. “Operations leads at mid-sized logistics companies who already use our product and are sceptical of new features” gives a designer far more to work with than “B2B decision-makers”.
3. What is the one thing they should take away?
If you have three messages, you have none. Pick the one that matters most. Everything else becomes supporting detail or a second piece.
4. Why should they believe it?
Proof is what separates marketing from decoration: a customer result, a number, a quote, a demo. Tell the designer what proof exists, and where it lives.
5. What exactly do you need?
List formats, sizes and placements up front. “A LinkedIn carousel (1080×1350, up to 8 slides), a 1200×628 link image and an email header” prevents the classic late request for “just one more size”.
6. What are the constraints?
Brand rules, legal wording, mandatory logos, accessibility requirements, deadline and budget. Constraints are not limits on creativity; they are the edges of the canvas.
7. How will we know it worked?
Registrations, click-through, demo requests, internal approval from sales. When the success measure is clear, feedback becomes objective: does this help that number? instead of I’m not sure about the blue.
Show, don’t describe
Adjectives are unreliable. “Modern and clean” means something different to everyone in the room. Instead, attach:
- two or three examples you like, with a note on what you like about each;
- one example you dislike, and why;
- any previous work from your own brand that performed well.
This is doubly useful for AI tools, which respond far better to reference images and approved templates than to descriptive prompts.
A brief template you can copy
Project: Q3 customer webinar promotion
Goal: 400 registrations from existing customers
Audience: Operations leads at current customers, busy and sceptical of “new feature” messaging
Key message: See how three customers cut reporting time in half
Proof: Three short customer quotes, approved by legal
Deliverables: Email header, LinkedIn image (1200×628), website banner (1440×400)
Constraints: Use the new brand palette; customer logos only with written permission; deadline 12 September
Success: Registrations, tracked by UTM per channel
It fits on one page. It takes twenty minutes to write. It routinely saves days.
Using the brief with AI tools
When a first draft is coming from AI, paste the brief in full, then:
- attach your brand tokens (colours, type, logo usage) and one approved template;
- ask for three distinct directions rather than one “final” design;
- let a designer choose, combine and refine.
This mirrors what Nielsen Norman Group observed across several productivity studies: the biggest gains came when AI produced drafts and people focused on editing and judgment (NN/g).
The takeaway
Better briefs are the cheapest productivity upgrade a marketing team can make. They make designers faster, AI tools sharper and feedback shorter.
If you would rather hand the whole process to a senior team, our marketing design service starts with exactly this kind of brief, and you can see how we balance AI and human judgment in practice.
