How to brief a graphic designer for an event poster, with a template you can copy

A fundraising dinner is five weeks away. Someone on the committee messages a designer: “Can you do us a poster for the dinner? Something nice, Islamic feel.” Four drafts later, the date is still wrong on one version, the speaker has pulled out, the Instagram version has the booking link cut off, and the printer has emailed to say the PDF has no bleed.

None of that is the designer’s fault, and almost all of it is avoidable with a brief that takes twenty minutes to write. This guide walks through what to put in one, using an event poster as the example because it is the job community organisations commission most. The same approach works for a logo, a Ramadan timetable or a set of social media graphics.

Why most poster jobs go round in circles

Designers are paid, in effect, for time. Every round of changes that comes from missing information - a new date, a forgotten sponsor logo, a size nobody mentioned - is time spent redoing work rather than improving it. On a fixed-price job that eats the designer’s margin, and on an hourly one it eats your budget.

The fix is to separate two kinds of feedback. Content changes (what the poster says) should be finished before the designer starts. Design changes (how it looks) are what the revision rounds are for. A good brief makes sure the second kind is the only kind.

Send the final text, in order

This is the single most useful thing you can do. Type out every word that will appear on the poster, in order of importance, and get it signed off by whoever has the final say before you send it. For a dinner, that usually means:

1. The event name and a one-line description.
2. Date, start time and doors-open time.
3. Venue name and full address, with postcode.
4. Speakers or guests, with names spelt exactly as they want them.
5. Ticket price, and what it includes.
6. How to book: a short link or a QR code, and a phone number.
7. Your organisation’s name, logo and, if you are a registered charity, your charity number.
8. Any sponsor or partner logos, supplied as files rather than screenshots.

Mark which lines must be biggest. If everything is important, nothing is, and the designer will have to guess. A useful test: from across the street, what are the two things someone must be able to read? Usually it is the event name and the date.

Send photos of speakers at the highest resolution you have, and check you have permission to use them. A 200-pixel image saved from WhatsApp will print as a blur.

Say where it will be used

A poster is rarely one file any more. List every place it will appear, because each one is a different shape and the designer needs to plan for all of them from the start:

• Printed A4 or A3 for noticeboards. Ask for a print-ready PDF with 3mm bleed on each edge, so the printer can trim it cleanly, and with important text kept well inside the trim.
• A5 flyers, if you are handing them out after Jumu’ah. At A5, small print really is small, so you may want a shorter version of the text.
• An Instagram feed post. Portrait sizes show up bigger in the feed than square ones, and the profile grid now crops posts to a taller shape than it used to, so ask the designer to keep key text away from the top and bottom edges.
• A story or WhatsApp Status version, which is tall and narrow (9:16, typically 1080 by 1920 pixels).
• A wide banner for your website or a Facebook event cover.

Tell the designer which version matters most. For many masjid events the WhatsApp version is seen by far more people than the printed one, and it should be designed first rather than squeezed out of an A4 layout at the end.

Arabic text, verses and logos

Many briefs include an ayah, a hadith or a phrase in Arabic. Send it as typed text, copied from a source you trust, and never as a screenshot. Then do two things.

First, have someone who reads Arabic check the final artwork, not only the text you sent. Some design software, set up for English, quietly breaks Arabic: letters appear unjoined or in reverse order, and the designer may not be able to tell. This is a known problem with right-to-left text, not a sign of a careless designer, but it is the client who gets embarrassed when the poster is up.

Second, think about where the poster will end up. Some organisations prefer not to print Qur’anic verses on flyers that will be dropped on the floor or thrown away. That is your call, but make it before the designer builds the layout around a verse.

If you have a logo, send the original file. If all you have is a JPG from an old letterhead, say so; the designer may need to redraw it, which is a separate small job.

Describe the look with examples

Words like “modern”, “Islamic feel” and “eye-catching” mean something different to every reader. Examples are far better. Collect two or three posters you like and one you don’t, and say in a sentence what you like about each: “the big date”, “the gold on dark green”, “not too busy”.

If your organisation has brand colours or fonts, send them. If it doesn’t, say whether you want this poster to start a look you can reuse for future events. That is a slightly bigger job, and a useful one, because a consistent look makes your events recognisable at a glance on a crowded noticeboard.

Revisions, deadlines and files

Revisions

Agree the number of revision rounds up front. Two rounds is a common arrangement for a poster. Collect everyone’s comments into one message per round. Five committee members sending separate, contradicting notes is the fastest way to use up a budget.

Deadlines

Work backwards from the day you need printed copies in hand. Online printers typically quote a few working days for standard posters and flyers, plus delivery, and the social version usually needs to be out three or four weeks before an evening event. Give the designer the real deadline, not a fake early one; they plan around it.

Budget

Give a figure or a range. If you have no idea what is reasonable, ask two or three designers for a quote against the same brief. Our guide on how designers price a poster explains what goes into the number, which helps when one quote is four times another.

Files

List what you want delivered: the print PDF with bleed, each social size as a PNG or JPG, and whether you want the editable source file. Copyright in the design normally stays with the designer unless you agree in writing that it is transferred, so if you will want to change the date next year yourself, say so now and expect it to affect the price.

A brief template to copy

Copy this into an email or a job post and fill in each line.

• About us: who we are, in two sentences, and who the event is for.
• The job: one poster design, plus the sizes listed below.
• Final text: attached, signed off, in order of importance.
• Most important on the poster: event name and date.
• Sizes: A4 print PDF with 3mm bleed; Instagram portrait; 9:16 story; website banner.
• Arabic: one ayah, typed text attached, to be checked by us before print.
• Look: three examples attached, with a line on what we like about each.
• Brand: logo files and colours attached, or “none yet”.
• Revisions: two rounds, comments sent in one message per round.
• Deadline: first draft by [date]; print files by [date].
• Budget: [figure or range].
• Files we need: print PDF, PNGs at each size, source file [yes or no].
• Contact for sign-off: [one name].

If you send this, most designers will be able to give you a firm quote straight away and a first draft that needs polishing rather than rebuilding.

Looking for someone? Browse graphic designers on DeenTask, where prices are shown upfront, or post the brief as a job. If the poster is for a new website launch too, our guide to what a mosque website needs covers that brief. And if you are hiring a teacher for the classes the poster is advertising, see how to hire a Qur’an teacher.