Design brief examples

Sable built a budgeting app for salaried users, but half of new sign-ups are freelancers whose income arrives in unpredictable lumps. The current monthly budget screen tells them they are overspending on the exact weeks an invoice has not landed yet.

Redesign the core budgeting flow so someone with an irregular income can see what is safe to spend today, without doing the arithmetic themselves.

Freelancers and contractors aged 25 to 45, comfortable with mobile banking, low patience for spreadsheets.

• User flow for onboarding an irregular income
• Five key screens at mobile size, light and dark
• A reusable component set for amounts, dates and alerts
• A short rationale page explaining the safe-to-spend logic

• A first-time user understands their safe-to-spend figure within ten seconds
• No screen requires manual budget maths
• Alerts inform rather than shame

Nord Line runs overnight crossings that most travellers treat as a cheap alternative to a hotel. Management wants the crossing itself to feel like part of the trip rather than a means to an end, but the existing identity is a 1990s wordmark applied inconsistently across ships, tickets and signage.

Create an identity system that works at the scale of a ship hull and at the size of a boarding pass, and that reads clearly in the dark.

Leisure travellers booking short breaks, plus freight drivers who use the route weekly.

• Primary and secondary logo lock-ups
• Colour and typography system with night-legibility notes
• Wayfinding and signage applications
• Ticket, boarding pass and cabin key card designs
• A 12-page guideline extract

• The mark stays legible at 8 mm and at 8 m
• The palette holds up under low deck lighting
• Applications feel like one family, not one logo repeated

Fixture opens two Saturdays a month in a community hall, where volunteers help people mend appliances, clothing and bicycles. Everything is currently signposted with printed A4 sheets in three different fonts.

Design a single, warm, unmistakable mark that volunteers can stencil, print and photocopy without it falling apart.

Local residents of all ages, many of whom find the venue by walking past it.

• Primary logo plus a one-colour version
• A simplified icon for stickers and pin badges
• Minimum-size and clear-space rules
• One mock-up on a hall banner

• The mark survives a black and white photocopy
• It reads from across a street
• It suggests repair without using a spanner cliché

Marrow & Co sells concentrate refills in pouches, but shoppers routinely buy the wrong scent because the six pouches differ only by a small colour band. Retail buyers have also asked for packaging that stacks without toppling.

Design a refill packaging system where the six products are distinguishable at arm's length on a crowded shelf.

Supermarket shoppers making a ten-second decision, often with a trolley in the way.

• Dieline and artwork for one pouch format across six variants
• Front-of-pack hierarchy showing product, scent and dilution
• Shelf mock-up with all six side by side
• Recycling and dosage information layout

• Any two variants are told apart from two metres
• Dilution instructions are found without turning the pack
• The system extends to a seventh product without redesign

Bright Path teaches first aid to office staff. Its current handbook uses stock photographs of clinical models, and trainees report that they cannot tell which hand goes where during compressions.

Produce an illustration set that makes eight first-aid procedures unambiguous, in print and on screen.

Adults with no medical background, reading under time pressure.

• Eight procedure sequences, three to five frames each
• A style sheet covering figures, skin tones and motion cues
• Print and screen exports with colour notes

• Each step is understandable without its caption
• Hands, pressure and direction are always visible
• The set feels calm rather than alarming

Cadence Works gets most of its business by word of mouth. Its one-page website lists prices in a table and nothing else, so callers keep asking the same three questions: how long a service takes, whether they need to book, and whether electric bikes are covered.

Write the copy for a four-page site that answers those questions before anyone picks up the phone.

Commuters and weekend riders within a few miles of the workshop.

• Home, services, pricing and contact page copy
• Three service package descriptions
• Page titles and meta descriptions
• A short tone-of-voice note

• Turnaround, booking and e-bike questions are answered on the home page
• No paragraph runs longer than three sentences
• The voice sounds like a mechanic, not a marketer