The single biggest predictor of how good your first round of logo concepts will be isn't the designer's skill — it's the quality of the brief they started from. A vague brief produces vague concepts, no matter how talented the designer is.
What to include
- The business, in a sentence. What you do and who you do it for.
- Three direct competitors — and what you like or don't like about how they present themselves.
- Three words you want your brand to feel like (and, just as useful, three you want to avoid).
- Visual references — even from outside your industry — that capture a feeling you're after.
- Practical constraints — budget, timeline, any existing assets you need to keep.
What to leave out
Avoid prescribing the solution ("make the logo a blue circle with our initials") rather than the problem ("we need to feel more established than we currently do"). Designers work better from problems than from pre-decided solutions — that's the part you're paying them to solve.
The short version
A good brief describes the business, the competition, the feeling you want, and real constraints — and stops short of designing the logo yourself. That's the difference between a brief that gets you strong concepts and one that gets you a guess.