Kickoff questions
What this is. The questions we ask before our first meeting. Your answers become most of the creative brief, so the more plainly you answer, the faster we get to work.
How to use it. Each question has a short note on why we ask it and an example answer from Meaning Layer, a research library and set of tools for studying design through meaning. A few sentences is enough. If you do not know an answer, say so; that tells us what discovery has to find out.
The project
1. What do you want this project to do?
The result you are after, in your own words. This becomes the objectives in the brief.
Example. Find the first audience that would pay for Meaning Layer, and give it a brand and a sign-up page that reach them.
2. Why now?
What changed that makes this the moment. It tells us what is at stake and how fast we need to move.
Example. The library and its courses are running and have readers, but it has never been offered to anyone as a product.
The business
3. What does the company do, and how did it start?
The short version of your story. The way a company began often explains what it cares about.
Example. Meaning Layer is a research library and classroom for studying design through meaning, drawing on psychology, mythology, theology and the history of the craft. Abe Garcia, a designer and design educator, started it to bring the past back into design work and to build tools that find connections across time and place.
4. How does it make money, or how will it?
How the business works. A brand has to support the way the company earns.
Example. It does not yet. There is no price. (?)
The customers
5. Who are your customers?
Describe one real person if you can: their job, their day, what they care about.
Example. Working designers who learned the tools on the job, through a bootcamp or on their own, and never studied the history of their field.
6. What are they trying to get done?
The job they need done, which is often different from the product they buy.
Example. Explain why a design is right, in a review, to a client, or to themselves.
7. What do they use today instead of you, and what does that cost them?
Your real competition is often a habit, a free tool or a workaround. What it costs them is the opening.
Example. YouTube, Skillshare and blog posts. They get the idea without the source, and lose the argument to whoever can name the reason.
The competition
8. Who else are they choosing between, and what do those companies do well?
The companies you are compared with, and what they get right.
Example. Paid courses and bootcamps, which teach tools well. Museum sites and archives, which hold the sources but are not written for a designer at work.
Success
9. What does success look like in three months? In a year?
Something we could count or see. This is how we will judge the work.
Example. In three months, the first 100 sign-ups. (?) In a year, readers who come back every week. (?)
What exists
10. What do you already have that we must keep?
A name, a logo, colors, photography or written copy. Tell us what you love and what you are ready to let go.
Example. The name, the wordmark and the three colors.
11. Is there anything we cannot say or show?
Legal limits, words to avoid, images that are off limits.
Example. No stock photography and no AI illustration. Every image carries a caption and a credit.
Who decides
12. Who makes the final decision, and who else has to approve the work?
Knowing this early keeps a late opinion from undoing a decision.
Example. Abe Garcia, founder.
Time and budget
13. When does this need to be finished, and is there a date that cannot move?
Example. The brand by November 4, the brand book and the sign-up page by December 2.
14. What is the budget?
A range is fine. It tells us what is possible, not what to spend.
Example. None set yet. (?)