How we scope a brief.

A brief is a small document that does a large amount of work. It announces a problem, hints at a budget, and frames the relationship you and a future client are going to have for the next eight weeks. We treat every one that comes in like a letter from a friend asking for honest advice - because that is what it is, even when the letter is filled out in a form on our website.

First read: what they are actually saying.

Most briefs say two things. The first is in the chips and dropdowns. The second is in the notes field at the bottom. The chips tell us the shape - industry, goals, features, timeline. The notes tell us the why. We always read the notes first. The why is the part that almost never makes it into the dropdowns, and the why is where the work is.

When the notes are five words, we ask one follow-up question. When the notes are five hundred words, we read them twice before we open a doc.

Second read: what the budget is telling us.

Budget is the most honest thing on the form. It is also the most misread. People often pick a tier that is one below what they can actually afford, because they want a deal. People also pick a tier that is one above what they actually have, because they want to seem serious. We try to read past the choice and toward the truth.

We do this by reading the budget against the goals. If the goals require a full brand and a multi-page ecom site, and the budget says “Starter,” we know the brief is mis-scoped. We do not just push them up a tier. We write a proposal that does the most honest version of the smallest possible scope, and we explain in plain language what gets cut and why.

Third read: what is missing.

Briefs are always missing two or three pieces. The most common: nobody mentions the existing site’s analytics. Nobody mentions who internally will own the project after we hand it off. Nobody mentions the dates around it - a board meeting, a press launch, a fundraising deadline.

We list everything missing in a short “Things we will ask about” section at the top of the proposal. The list is short on purpose. We never want our proposal to feel like a survey.

Writing the proposal.

• Open with the brief, restated in our own words. If we got the brief wrong, the client knows in the first paragraph.
• List the deliverables with quantities (1 brand book, 1 site, 5 pages, etc.) so the scope is countable, not adjectival.
• Write the timeline in weeks, not days. Days create false precision.
• Quote the fee in one number. No “up to,” no ranges. A fee is a promise to deliver the listed scope at that number.
• End with a written list of what is NOT included. This is often the most useful page in the document.

And then we wait.

A proposal lands in someone’s inbox at a moment we cannot see. They might read it standing in a kitchen. They might read it on their phone in a meeting. They might forward it to a partner and forget. Our job is to write the kind of document that survives all three. Quiet, considered, in plain English, with the numbers in writing. The brief is the start of a conversation; the proposal is the part where we earn the right to keep talking.