The single biggest predictor of how a commissioned infographic project will go is the quality of the brief. Studios who consistently deliver on time, on budget, and to a high editorial standard are usually working from briefs that have done the hard thinking up front. Studios who consistently disappoint are often working from briefs that left the hardest questions to the design phase, where they cost five times as much to answer.
This checklist covers what a useful brief should include. Treat it as a starting point — your studio may ask follow-up questions, and the better ones definitely will.
1. The argument
What is the single sentence the reader should walk away believing? Write it down before anything else. If you can’t, you’re not ready to brief a studio yet — you’re ready to brief an editor.
Examples of usable single-sentence arguments: “UK SaaS companies are losing more revenue to involuntary churn than they realise.” “Healthcare IT spending is shifting from infrastructure to security at an accelerating rate.” “The countries doing best on women’s representation in politics aren’t the ones you’d expect.”
2. The audience
Who is the piece for, specifically? Job titles, sector, sophistication level. The visual conventions and writing register that work for a CIO audience are different from those that work for a clinician audience or a Davos delegate audience.
3. The data
What’s the source material? Bring it to the brief, not in the second meeting. A studio looking at the actual dataset can tell you within an hour whether the story you think is in the data is actually in the data — which saves enormous amounts of rework.
For research-led pieces, also include: the methodology document, the population and sample size, the date range, and any caveats your research team would want included.
4. The format and distribution
Where will the piece live? A single static infographic optimised for press embedding is a different brief from a multi-piece social series, which is a different brief from a piece designed to anchor a 30-page report. Be specific about distribution channels and final dimensions.
5. The timeline and budget
Tell the studio your budget band before they quote. A studio quoting blind to budget will either over-scope (and surprise you) or under-scope (and make compromises you wouldn’t have made). Real budgets get real scoping.
For timeline: include the publication date AND the internal-review milestones. Most projects stall in legal or compliance review, not in design.
6. The visual reference
Three to five existing pieces (from any source) that capture the visual register you’re after. Studios will ask for these anyway; bringing them up front makes the first meeting twice as productive.
7. Brand constraints
Brand guidelines, restricted palette, mandatory typography, logo placement rules. Whatever the brand police will object to in the first review — surface it in the brief.
Questions a good studio should ask back
- What success looks like — coverage targets, internal-use targets, sales-enablement targets.
- What stakeholders need to approve the piece, and at what stages.
- What the piece is competing against in the audience’s attention budget.
- Whether the data has been validated, or whether validation is part of scope.
- Whether revisions are scoped per round or unlimited (and how the studio handles scope creep).
If a studio takes your brief without asking any of these — that’s a yellow flag. Good studios push back early.
Ready to brief? Submit at /get-matched/ and we’ll match you with up to three studios who’ll do the back-and-forth properly.