How can I write a design brief for my art? What should I include in it?

I’m not an artist and I know nothing about design briefs,
but I thought I would tackle your question for two reasons: (1) to learn something about
which I am ignorant; and (2) to show how easy it is to learn these days thanks to the
internet.

I therefore went to Google and began typing in
the words “design brief for art.”  Before I could even finish typing this phrase, Google
was already suggesting some other search possibilities, include “design brief
template.”  In other words, Google was already suggesting some sites that would not only
tell me how to prepare a design brief but would also show me how to do
one.

The first article that popped up when I looked for
“design brief for art” was a piece by David Airey:

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http://www.davidairey.com/how-do-you-write-a-graphic-design-brief/

Airey
begins by asserting that a design brief is necessary for two main
reasons:

• It ensures
  the client knows exactly what s/he wants to achieve from the
  project.


• It acts as a point of reference for designers,
  forming the focus of their
  work.

The fact
that Airey’s article is the first that appears suggests that it is especially relevant. 
It is, however, also quite brief, so I recommend that you not stop there but do the same
search I did and look for other relevant sites.

Among the
links that came up when I searched for “design brief template” were
these:

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http://elise.com/web/tools/creativebrief.html

http://gettingattention.org/articles/197/planning-budgets/nonprofit-creative-brief-template.html

Please
note design briefs may differ depending on the industry for which you are preparing them
and/or the country in which you reside.  In case you are working in the United Kingdom,
I’ve provided a link below to advice about preparing a design brief for British
readers.

It’s also worth remembering that requirements in
practically any field can change over time, so it’s always important to try to find the
most recent and up-to-date information.  I would be suspicious, for instance, of any
information that is more than ten years old, especially if more recent information is
available.

Finally, I thought it might be interesting to
search for “design brief sample.”  Here is one of the first links that turned up, and it
looks especially helpful:

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http://www.technologystudent.com/designpro/problem1.htm

You
may want to repeat the search for “design brief sample” to see what else you can find,
since this link may not be relevant to an artist.

Thanks
for giving me this opportunity to learn about design briefs, which I had never even
heard of before.  Thanks to you, I am a (slightly) smarter person now than I was 15
minutes ago!