: What is the difference between a project proposal and a design brief? I am really confused about the difference between a design brief and project proposal and when I should use them during

@Speyer780

The clue is in the name. They address different things.

The design brief covers just that: design. This is where you discuss, determine, and otherwise find out things like:


what the client likes (blue, high contrast, side menus) and doesn't
like (green, animated transitions, autoplay video)
the physical logistics of the job (is it a WordPress site or HTML5?
Is it 6x9, a business card, or A4? a suite of stationery or a one-off
flyer?)
the goal of the job
what counts as a conversion, or success
who is the client's audience
who is the client's competition


A report after such a meeting would cover all the artistic parts of the job.

A project proposal covers the entire job, and design is only mentioned insofar as it's a line item saying "Project is Designed and Client chooses a design." It is literally what you are proposing to do for the client's job. You can have a project proposal for something which has no actual design involved (a pure production job where you take the client's files and print them, for example). It's more than a scope of work and not quite a contract, and might overlap both. It describes the things you are going to do, the things the client is going to do, and what isn't included and will cost extra if the client wants it. For example:


Description of the job (website of X pages, stationery suite, six
flyers, poster, corporate ID)
Procedure for the job (meeting, evaluation, Designer provides comps,
Client chooses comp, Designer creates final, Client approves,
Designer delivers)
Payment milestones
Number of rounds of revisions
How Client is sending assets, and deadlines (e.g., within 10 business
days of Designer request)
Project deadline
Kill fee or other cancellation procedures
Items which are explicitly not included


As far as when: your first meeting or two with the client is the design stage, where you figure out what the job is going to be: the shape, the scope, what it's going to look like, the deadline. After that you can determine the project logistics: we know what we want to do, and here's how we think we can execute it.

There are good answers here about what goes into a job contract, some of which can also apply to a project proposal.

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