How to write a brief that works

A brief has four parts

The most common reason a frame comes out wrong is not technical: the brief says what should sell rather than what should be visible. The model does not know the backpack is your bestseller, but it does know what "leather", "window light" and "shot from above" mean. So a brief is written like a job sheet for a photographer, not like a headline.

• The object and the material: "a leather backpack", "a matte dark glass bottle", "a heavy wool knit".
• The place: a kitchen counter, a seamless backdrop, a shop interior, an oak bench.
• The light: soft morning light, hard sun from the left, one source from the side and the rest in shadow.
• The framing, if you care about it: from above, at eye level, close on the texture.

In that order, because that is how models read a brief: the first conditions are taken more seriously than the last. Put seven requirements in one sentence and the engine will satisfy the first few and treat the rest as a suggestion — and it will not tell you which ones it dropped.

What is not in the frame has to be said separately

This is the least obvious part of the whole job. Models are trained on advertising material in which packaging always carries print and a studio always has a light in it — so blank packaging and a clean frame read as unfinished, and they fill them in themselves.

• "The label is completely blank — no text, no logo, no lettering anywhere in the frame." Without that sentence you get an invented brand name on the lid.
• "No lights, no stands, no equipment in the frame." Our Seedream 4 sample kept coming back with a softbox until the brief ruled it out.
• "No voiceover." Video engines that generate sound along with the picture add narration, and it says things nobody approved.
• "Those three lines are the only text anywhere in the image." Models that set type will happily add a caption or small print in a corner.

Give text and numbers exactly

If the graphic has to carry a headline, list every line separately, in quotation marks, and name its role: headline, subhead, button. The model will build the size hierarchy itself, but it has to know which is which. Add that the spelling must be exactly as supplied — with Polish characters that cuts down the number of attempts.

The opposite rule applies to numbers you cannot defend. A model will cheerfully write "the best price in Poland" on a banner, or add a discount percentage that is not in your promotion. Whatever appears on the graphic is your responsibility rather than the engine’s, so the only figures in the brief should be the true ones.

One thing at a time

A brief asking for a close-up of the texture, a wide interior shot and space for a headline all at once will get a compromise between the three and none of them properly. The same holds for video: four seconds is enough for a push in or an orbit, not both.

If you need three different frames, order three renders with three briefs. It costs the same as four versions of one vague brief, and every result will be usable for something.

The rest depends on the engine

Everything above works everywhere. Beyond that, each engine has behaviours you cannot infer from a description: one takes ratios only from a closed list and quietly returns a different shape when asked for anything else, another will not spell a Polish word correctly, a third has a ceiling of eight seconds. Every model page carries a "How to brief this model" section with the things that apply only to it.

It is also worth knowing that a poor result does not always mean a poor brief. Sometimes it means the model you picked simply does not do that — and rewriting the brief a fifth time is a waste of credits.