The Brief Beneath the Brief

I take that seriously. I also treat it as the first answer, not the last. What someone asks for is usually their best guess at fixing a problem they haven’t quite named yet. Part of my job is finding that problem before we start making things.

After twelve years in brand and design, I’ve found that design problems are rarely design problems. They’re clarity problems. That’s why this blog is called Beneath the Brief.

Here are four briefs from my own work, and what turned out to be underneath each one.

1. “We need a website.”

The ask: A set of holiday homes needed a website to take bookings.

Underneath: The homes sit side by side in the same estate, with the same pool, the same beach and similar layouts. A guest scrolling a booking platform sees listing after listing that look almost identical. A website alone wouldn’t change that. The real job was giving guests a reason to choose this one.

So the work started with brand and photography. We worked out what guests needed to see to feel confident, planned the photos around it, and made sure the same look and story showed up on the website and on every booking platform. The website was one part of the answer, not the whole of it.

2. “We need a sale catalogue.”

The ask: A beauty retailer needed a catalogue for its December sale.

Underneath: Customers paged through catalogues once, threw them away, and went back to buying what they already knew. A better-looking catalogue would have met the same fate. It needed a reason to be kept.

So it became half magazine, half sales flyer. Product pages sat alongside tutorials, application tips and “get the look” pages, so the catalogue was useful after the first read. It gave people a reason to try something new, and a reason to pick it up again.

3. “Refresh it, but keep it ours.”

The ask: A business ten years in knew its look had dated and wanted a refresh, without losing what its customers already recognised.

Underneath: The real question was how far to go. Change too little and nothing feels new. Change too much and ten years of recognition goes with it.

We worked through that together, looking at what had to stay and what could move. The result was a refined logo with flexible versions for different uses, an updated colour palette and type, and a brand book to guide everything that came next. The owner knew the brand better than anyone. My part was helping find the line between fresh and familiar.

4. “We need the screens designed.”

The ask: A financial services company building a new online platform needed its interface designed.

Underneath: The research and user flows were only partly defined when the work reached design, so there were gaps that screens alone couldn’t fill. The teams were spread across Durban, Cape Town and India, all working remotely through lockdown.

The real work was filling those gaps and keeping everyone working from the same picture. Alongside the screens, we built a library of components with clear rules for how each one behaves, so decisions held from a single button all the way through to a full journey.

What these have in common

None of these briefs was wrong. A website, a catalogue, a brand refresh and a set of screens were all delivered. But if I’d only made what was asked for, each one would have missed. The brief told me what to make. The problem underneath told me what it had to do.

How I find it

Finding the brief beneath the brief isn’t a matter of asking clients for answers they don’t have yet. It’s a conversation.

It starts with a short questionnaire: what makes your business special, what your biggest challenges are right now, and what success would look like in three to six months. Writing it down helps people think, and it gives me enough to put together a proposal.

Then we sit down together. Clients see my questions beforehand so they can mull them over, and sometimes we bring a Pinterest board to talk through.

Mostly, I listen. I want to know why they started the business, what drives them and what they’re hoping for, alongside the practical questions:

• Why now? What changed that made this the moment to act?
• Who are you losing to, and why? Customers rarely choose between you and nothing.
• What have you already tried? And what happened?
• How will you know it worked? More bookings, more enquiries, fewer questions, a sale that sells through.

These are starting points, not a checklist. Where the conversation goes depends on what the client says.

Most clients don’t realise how much they’ve told me. To them it feels like a good conversation, and that’s the point. You don’t need the answers before you speak to a designer. Working them out together is often where the best part of a project starts.

What you’ll find here