What to prepare before a creative project
A practical list of what is worth gathering before the first conversation. None of it needs to be polished; all of it saves time.
The first conversation in a project goes better when a few things have already been answered — not formally, and not in a document, but answered. What follows is what we find genuinely useful, and why.
None of it has to be complete before getting in touch. A rough version of each is worth more than a finished version of one.
Who it is for
The single most useful sentence a client can bring is a specific description of the person they are trying to reach. Not a demographic bracket, but a situation: who has this problem, what do they currently do about it, and what would make them choose differently?
Vague audiences produce vague work, because there is nothing to test a decision against.
What has to change
A project is easier to scope when it is framed as a change rather than an artefact. “We need a new website” describes a deliverable. “People reach us and cannot tell what we sell” describes the change. The second leads somewhere — occasionally to a smaller and cheaper project than the one originally imagined.
What is wrong with the current situation
Specific complaints are more useful than general dissatisfaction, and complaints from outside the business are the most useful of all. What do people ask that they should not have to ask? Where do they get stuck? Which page do they arrive on and leave from?
If there is nothing existing to criticise, the equivalent question is: what do the alternatives do that you would not want to copy?
What you expect to receive
Being explicit about deliverables early prevents the most common disappointment at the end. Is the outcome a mark, or an identity system with guidelines? Designs, or a built and hosted site? Something the team can edit, or something fixed? There is no wrong answer, but the answer changes the work.
References, including the ones you dislike
Collect examples — websites, packaging, identities, anything, from any industry. Then, for each, write one line about what specifically you are pointing at: the typography, the tone, the density, the restraint.
References you dislike are just as valuable, and often clearer. A client who says “not this, it feels like it is shouting” has told us more than one who supplies ten admired brands without comment.
Constraints you already know about
Existing assets that have to be kept. A name that cannot change. Regulatory requirements, print processes, an internal team who will maintain it, a platform already paid for. Constraints are not obstacles to good work — they are the conditions that make a design specific instead of generic.
A budget range and a sense of timing
A range is enough. It is not a negotiation; it is a way of establishing what shape of project is realistic. The same goes for timing: a real date, if one exists, and what is driving it. If there is no deadline, saying so is also useful.
Being open about both at the start avoids designing something that was never going to be affordable or deliverable — which costs the client more time than it costs us.