Three signs for one shop

A man opening a small hardware shop in Al Ain asks three signwriters to paint the name above his door.

He tells each of them the same thing. The shop's name, in both languages. White letters on dark green. Readable from a car on the main road. Nothing else.

A week later he has three sketches, and they are not the same. One has tall, narrow letters. One puts the Arabic larger than the English. One adds a thin border around the edge.

He looks at them and finds he would be happy with any of the three. That is the sign he wrote a good brief.

A brief is not a demand for a copy of the picture in your head. Three capable people given the same words will always come back with three different answers, because they are capable, and because words leave room. The test is whether you can live with that room. If every version they hand back is one you would put on the wall, the brief did its job.

If one of them comes back with red letters and he is upset, the fault is not the signwriter's. Colour mattered to him and he said it. If the size of the English mattered, and he said nothing, he has no complaint when it changes.

That is the whole discipline. Before asking anyone to make something, go through what you would be unhappy to see change. Each of those belongs in writing. Everything else can be left to the person you are paying for their judgement.

What you care about and leave unsaid, you have quietly agreed to leave to chance.