How to read a brief.

§I Most briefs are translations.

Most packaging briefs are translations of decisions that have already been made elsewhere. The brief is not the point at which the brand's thinking begins; it is the point at which a prior decision — usually commercial, usually made in a different meeting — has to be handed over to a design team. The brief is the translation. Reading it well means being able to tell, in the first paragraph, which decision is being translated, and whether the translation is serving the brand or serving the meeting.

A well-written brief tells you, in its opening, three things: the brand's argument, the category problem the pack must solve, and the specific commercial constraint any solution must honour. A poorly written brief tells you none of these, but tells you, at length, what the pack should look like. If the brief is dictating aesthetic outcomes, it is solving the meeting's anxiety about uncertainty; it is not briefing the brand.

§II Three red flags.

Three red flags to look for in a packaging brief. One: the brief begins with a reference to a competitor's pack — ‘we want to look more like X’. The brief is translating a commercial comparison rather than a brand position, and the output will be a derivative. Two: the brief specifies colour before it specifies voice. Colour is a consequence of voice; briefs that dictate colour are the commercial outcome of a design committee decision, not the brand's own argument. Three: the brief has more constraints than arguments. A brief with eleven constraints and two arguments is a brief that has given up.

Each of the three red flags corresponds to a specific upstream failure: failure to position the brand independently of competitors; failure to articulate voice before aesthetic; failure to keep the editing function alive in briefing conversations. If any of the three are present, the brief needs to be re-written before the pack is designed. Designing on a broken brief produces broken packs. This is not the designer's fault; it is the brief's.

If the brief specifies colour before it specifies voice, the brief is not briefing the brand. It is briefing the committee. — Ada Chen

§III How to fix the brief.

The fix is structural. Re-write the brief in three paragraphs. Paragraph one: the argument the brand is making about itself, in one sentence, followed by three sentences of supporting reasoning. Paragraph two: the specific category problem this pack must solve, stated as a shopper behaviour that is currently not happening and should begin happening. Paragraph three: the specific commercial constraints — margin, channel, regulatory — the solution must honour. Sign the brief. Hand it over.

Three paragraphs. One side of paper. This is the pack brief. Everything else belongs in a follow-up. A designer given this three-paragraph brief produces a pack whose first round is consistent with the brand's thinking; a designer given a twenty-page brief with competitor references and colour specifications produces, correctly, a pack that solves the twenty-page document rather than the brand.

Two clients we have moved to the three-paragraph format, in the last year, have reported their first-round pack acceptance rate roughly doubling, and their total time-to-ship on new packs falling by about a third. Neither of them briefed better; their briefs got shorter, and the shorter brief was the better brief.