Start the brief on the audience's side

A typical brief opens with the company: who we are, what we make, what is new. Everything in it is true and none of it is what a stranger was thinking about before they met you. We call our studio Inverted because the first thing we do with a brief is turn it around.

What inverting a brief means

Take every sentence that starts with "we" and ask who is on the other end of it. "We launched a faster product" becomes "you are waiting too long for something". "We have fifteen years of experience" becomes "you are worried about choosing someone who will get it wrong". The facts stay the same. The order changes, and so does what goes at the top of the page.

Four questions we ask before any design work

• What did they believe yesterday? People arrive with an opinion about your category, often an unflattering one. Start there.
• What are they comparing you with? It is rarely the competitor you would name. It is often doing nothing.
• What would they need to see to change their mind? Proof, a price, a face, a case that looks like theirs.
• What is the next step that costs them almost nothing? Design the whole piece to make that one step obvious.

What changes on the page

An inverted brief usually moves three things. The headline stops naming the company and starts naming the situation. Proof moves up, above the description of the product. And the call to action shrinks, from "buy" to something a careful person would agree to on a first visit.

It also shortens the work. When you know the one belief you are trying to move, most of the content that felt essential turns out to be about you, and can go.

Try it on your homepage

Read your first screen as someone who has never heard of you and has four other tabs open. If the first sentence could have been written without knowing anything about your customer, invert it. If you would like a second pair of eyes, that is how every project of ours starts: with the immersion step.