Photography Tips · Brussels

How to Brief a Photographer on Your Brand’s Visual Identity (Template Included)

By Dmytro Derkach · Brussels-based commercial photographer

A photographer working from a vague brief, “make it look professional and modern”, produces generic results because the brief itself is generic. A strong brief takes fifteen minutes to write and changes the entire outcome of a shoot.

The four things every brief needs

Brand personality: is the brand playful and bold, or refined and understated? Naming this directly, rather than leaving it implied, gives a photographer a concrete direction for posing, color, and composition choices.

Visual references: two or three images, from any source, that capture the desired look. A photographer can interpret a reference far faster than a written description alone.

Color palette: the brand’s actual color codes, or at minimum a description of tones to lean toward or avoid, keeps the shoot visually aligned with existing brand materials rather than introducing a clashing new palette.

Where the photos will live: a website hero image, a social media grid, a printed brochure, and a LinkedIn profile all call for different framing, aspect ratios, and levels of formality. Naming the destination upfront avoids a mismatch discovered only after editing is complete.

A simple brief template

Brand personality in three words. Two to three reference images. Color palette or tones to use and avoid. List of where each image will be used. Any specific must-have shots. Any explicit no-gos, poses, colors, or styles to avoid.

What this actually saves

A clear brief reduces the number of reshoots, cuts down on back-and-forth editing revisions, and produces a set of images that actually look like they belong to the same brand rather than a disconnected batch. Fifteen minutes spent on this upfront regularly saves hours of revision later.