There is a particular kind of blank-page moment that comes before a packaging brief.
You know more or less what you want the box to feel like, but you don’t know exactly what a supplier actually needs from you in order to make that happen, so the brief either turns into a short, vague email, or a twenty-page document trying to cover every possibility.
Neither one is really necessary.
A strong brief isn’t about length, it’s about giving suppliers both the creative vision and the practical information. This way, the first conversation can be about the box itself rather than filling in the gaps.
What a strong brief actually includes
A good brief covers:
- What is going inside the box, ideally with product dimensions and weight
- Quantity required
- Required delivery date
- How the packaging will be used: e-commerce shipping, retail, gifting, PR or an event, etc.
- Branding and print requirements
- Budget, or at least a realistic target
- Reference images showing the look or unboxing experience you are aiming for
- Whether sustainability, protection, presentation or cost matters most for this job
The detail that most first-time clients leave out is how the box will actually travel. A presentation box handed to someone at an event will have very different structural requirements than a box that is moved through a courier network. That single fact changes the board grade, the closure mechanism and often the entire structure of the box.
If there’s a physical product that can come with the brief, it’s even better than dimensions on paper because it removes a lot of guesswork for the design team.
Where the budget conversation actually goes
Just because you’re on a budget doesn’t mean you have to strip a design back until it looks cheap. There are several genuine levers that shape cost without affecting how good the finished box looks.
Quantity is the obvious one, but size is just as important. Boxes built closely around a product use less board, create less waste and typically cost less to send than an oversized equivalent.
Print coverage and finishing are also significant factors. Full colour printing inside and out costs more than leaving areas unprinted, and premium finishes like embossing or a raised varnish also increase the price of a box. A well-designed insert or printed tissue can create a genuinely memorable unboxing moment without a large jump in spend.
This is why an early conversation about budget is always worth having, rather than designing your ideal box first and then stripping features once the quote lands. Working the other way around means spend goes toward the elements that will actually be noticed instead of being spread thinly across everything.
Getting the artwork right
If the artwork has already been finished, it needs to be set up against the approved dieline and supplied print-ready, including vector logos, high-resolution imagery and brand colours clearly identified where exact colour matching is important.
If the design is being built from scratch, more brand material helps, such as vector logos, brand guidelines, Pantone or CMYK references, fonts, high-resolution photography, examples of existing collateral, and any mandatory copy, barcodes, social handles or regulatory information that has to appear on the box.
It also helps to know what's non-negotiable from the off, whether that's logo placement or the reveal inside the box. A dieline shows every point where the box is cut, creased, folded and joined, not just its outline.
Here are a few things you can do to avoid being caught out:
- Keep logos and text clear of cut and crease lines
- Give backgrounds and images enough bleed beyond the cut line, or you’ll end up with an unwanted white edge
- Check how panels line up once the box is assembled, because artwork that looks centred on a flat file can land across a fold or on the wrong panel once built
If you want to design the box yourself, our template file makes standard sizes much easier to get right. A custom size is still a custom design in its own right, even when it's based on a standard template, so the same care around folds, margins and bleed still applies.
Either way, we can supply the dieline for your own designer, either in-house or outsourced, and check any artwork you supply before going to production.
What a brief that comes in ready actually looks like
A genuinely good brief doesn’t need to be twenty pages long.
The product, dimensions, quantity, deadline, budget, branding and a few reference images which show the direction you’d like to go in is usually enough.
"The difference is particularly noticeable at the design and estimating stage. Instead of multiple emails establishing basic information, we can immediately recommend a board grade, box style and print method, create or supply the appropriate dieline and start costing the job accurately."
– Roisin Donnellan, Boxes To Go
The gap between a brief that’s ready on arrival and one that still needs work shows up as time. Less time spent establishing the basics means more of the process can be focused on actually designing and costing the job properly.
The short version
- Cover the product, quantity, delivery date, use case, branding, budget and a couple of references before anything else
- Work out your budget early on so the spend goes toward what will actually be noticed
- Tell your supplier what is non-negotiable, whether that’s the logo, colour or the reveal inside the box
- Supply real brand assets, not just a description of them, if someone else is doing the design
- Ask for the template and dieline if you or your own designer are handling the artwork, and check folds, bleed and safety margins against it before sending anything back
None of this needs to be complicated, it just needs to be in place before the first conversation starts, rather than pieced together across several emails afterwards.
Not sure what to put in your next brief? We would rather have that conversation early than end up scrambling around later. Send through what you have, even if it feels incomplete, and we will tell you what is missing. Get a quote or talk to our team and see what we can do to help you.