Top Creative Brief Templates for Product Designers

Creative Briefs serve as a foundational roadmap for product designers, aligning project objectives, target audience insights, and brand elements in a cohesive document. This helps foster clarity and focus throughout the design process, facilitating effective communication across teams. A Creative Brief template in Notion can streamline the creation of these briefs, ensuring key elements are consistently addressed and easily shared within project teams.

Before crafting your own Creative Brief template, explore these examples to simplify the process and enhance the effectiveness of your design projects.

What Should Creative Brief Templates Include?

Choosing the right Creative Brief Template can streamline your project's initiation phase, ensuring all team members are aligned from the start. Here are key components to look for:

Project Objectives: This section should clearly outline what the project aims to achieve, helping to guide the focus and resources effectively.
Target Audience: A detailed description of who the end user is provides invaluable direction for all design and marketing decisions.
Key Messages: Identifying the core messages that need to be communicated can influence the creative strategy and final outputs.
Timeline and Budget: These elements define the scope and scale of the project, ensuring that expectations are realistic and adhered to.

With these components, a Creative Brief Template not only serves as a foundational tool but also as a strategic guide throughout the creative process.

What Should Creative Brief Templates Avoid?

Choosing the right creative brief template is crucial for streamlining your design process. However, some elements can hinder rather than help. Here are three key components to steer clear of:

Overly Complex Language: Avoid templates that use jargon or overly technical language. They can confuse stakeholders and obscure your project’s goals.
Excessive Detail: While detail is important, too much can overwhelm and detract from the main objectives. Opt for templates that allow clarity and focus.
Rigid Structure: Creativity requires flexibility. Templates that are too rigid can stifle innovation. Choose one that allows for adjustments and spontaneous input.

Remember, the best templates are those that enhance communication and efficiency without sacrificing creativity. Choose wisely to ensure your project's success.

1Small Design Agency Task Management

This template helps to organise incoming work from the client account management teams into a creative design team at a small design agency. Often there are competing creative deadlines across account management teams which can lead to miss management of task priorities. On this template both the management team and creative team have their own workspace which is connected together, providing a way to manage creative tasks.

A template preview for Small Design Agency Task Management

2Influencer brief

The influencer brief template is your go-to resource for streamlining collaborations with influencers. This template organizes all vital campaign information, such as campaign objectives, content examples, talking points, and deliverables. By providing a clear brief, your team can ensure influencers align with your brand's vision, ultimately leading to more impactful promotions.

3Brand Design Brief

Ugh, tired of design drafts that miss the mark?

You know, the ones that look kinda pretty, but don't really connect with your audience or boost your sales?

Been there, done that. That's why I created this super-simple Brand Design Brief Template.

Think of it as your magic wand for crafting a brand that:
Turns heads with stunning visuals that capture your unique vibe.
Speaks to your ideal customers like they're old friends.
Crushes the competition by standing out from the crowd.
Drives real business results, not just likes and shares.

No more design drama, Just a clear roadmap that helps you and your designer:
Understand your target audience inside-out. Who are they? What makes them tick?
Unleash your creative vision. Playful? Sleek? You name it! ✨
Spot your competitive edge. What are they doing right (and wrong)?
Fuel your designer's imagination. Share visual inspo to spark their creativity.
Align design with your business goals. Let's make it happen!

4Content Deliverables

Devin Reed's Content Deliverables Template is designed to help you effectively plan and track your content deliverables for an entire quarter. This template lets you record the deliverable name, its status, project description, demand, target audience, lift, and ETA. The option to view by status, lift, or ETA gives you the flexibility to manage your content projects in a way that best suits your workflow. Simplify your content planning and stay ahead of your deliverables with this efficient Notion template.

A template preview for Content Deliverables

5Product and Content Idea Generator

The Idea Generator template revolutionizes the way individuals, teams, and companies generate ideas by providing a systematic and focused approach. It eliminates distractions and shiny object syndrome, allowing users to concentrate on important ideas that truly matter. With this template, users unlock their creative potential, develop innovative solutions tailored to their target market, gain confidence in execution, and explore new perspectives that challenge traditional thinking. By leveraging the Idea Generator, individuals and organizations can optimize their productivity, generate winning ideas, and confidently bring their solutions to life.

A template preview for Product and Content Idea Generator

6Brand Foundations Framework

You can use this visual framework is a tool to help you structure your brand foundations and map out the hierarchy of your brand narrative and supporting messaging. Use it as a reference for a more robust messaging guide, or use it as a template and fill in each block with your actual mission statement, vision statement, and so on.

7Creative Brief

A simple document to help you organize all requirements and information needed to enable smooth collaboration with agencies and freelancers.

8Approving Campaigns/ Briefs with External Agencies

This template efficiently organizes campaign information, including goals, target audience, and key messaging. It features a table for tracking tasks and deliverables, an approvals checklist, and an integrated Calendly booking page for effortless scheduling of review sessions with agencies and internal teams.

A template preview for Approving Campaigns/ Briefs with External Agencies

9Design Brief

A simple document to help you organize all requirements and information needed for effective execution of design projects.

10Creative brief

Creative projects have many moving parts. This creative brief lets you gather all the necessary information and materials in one place — goals, deliverables, timeline, budget, and more. Get aligned with internal or external teams to set expectations and move forward with clarity.

Closing Thoughts

Utilizing these templates streamlines the brainstorming process, allowing for a clearer focus on innovation and user experience. They ensure all critical elements are covered efficiently.

By adopting these frameworks, you can enhance collaboration among team members, leading to more cohesive and innovative outcomes. Start implementing them today to see the difference in your workflow!

What is a Target Audience?

The specific group of people for whom the product is designed, characterized by behavior, demographics, or specific needs.

What is a Deliverable?

A tangible or intangible output of the creative process, such as designs, prototypes, or presentations, specified in the creative brief.

What is a Milestone Schedule?

A timeline within the creative brief that outlines key dates and goals for the project to ensure timely progress and delivery.