How to brief Claude
like a designer.
Most disappointing Claude design output traces back to a thin brief, not a weak model. Here's the structure that gets you a usable first draft instead of a guess.
The five rules of a good Claude design brief
A design brief for Claude is the same discipline as briefing a junior designer or an agency, just written down instead of assumed. Five things separate a brief that produces something usable from one that produces a generic first guess.
State the goal, not the output
Not "make me a hero image", but "get a visitor to book a free intake call within one screen". Claude designs towards a goal far better than it designs towards a noun. The output follows once the job is clear.
Give it the constraints a human collaborator would need
Brand colours and fonts, format and dimensions, what must stay fixed (logo lockup, legal line) and what can flex. Every constraint you leave out becomes a guess Claude has to make on your behalf, and guesses are where "off-brand" comes from.
Attach at least one concrete reference
A past piece you liked, a competitor layout you don’t want to copy but do want to react to, even a rough sketch. Claude works from examples faster than it works from adjectives; "warmer, more editorial" means little until you show it what warmer looks like to you.
Ask for options, not a final answer
Request two or three directions before you ask for polish. Picking a direction first and refining second costs far fewer rounds than refining a single draft that was never the right direction to begin with.
Iterate with specific notes, not vibes
"Try it with a serif display, less white space, and swap the CTA to rust" moves the work forward. "I don’t love it" doesn’t give Claude anything to act on, and you’ll spend the next round re-explaining what you meant.
Want to see this method run against a real brief, start to finish? Read a full session walkthrough, or if design tools aren't your day job, see what a non-designer can produce with it.
Coaching designed
to end.
Reading the method is one thing; having someone check your first attempts against your actual brand rules is another. Three promises, in writing, if you bring it to a session:
Independence Guarantee
On the Deep Dive Programme you'll be working independently inside six sessions, or we'll keep going: up to two further sessions free.
24-Hour Match
Tell us what you do; we'll match you with the right specialist within 24 hours. Guaranteed.
Things people
usually ask.
The same things a good human brief needs: the goal, the audience, the constraints (brand rules, format, deadline), and at least one concrete reference. Claude fills gaps you leave open with guesses, so the fewer gaps, the closer the first draft lands.
No. Plain language about what you want and why works, as long as it’s specific. "Make it pop" is a guess-inviting brief; "reduce this to one headline, one image and one action, in the brand’s rust-and-cream palette" is not.
A prompt-writing course teaches phrasing. This teaches briefing: the structure and information a design task needs before you write a single prompt, then how to run the iteration loop once Claude’s first draft comes back. Structure fixes more output problems than clever wording does.
This guide covers the method. Boffin Hub’s Claude Design coaching applies it live to your real briefs and brand rules, with someone checking your first attempts, which is where most people get unstuck faster than reading alone.