Writing about a brief you turned down

There is an odd little genre of designer posts that tends to go down well: the one where a designer explains, with some care, that they said no to a piece of work. Not a grand farewell to client work in general, and not a thinly veiled shot at the person who asked. Just a short account of a brief they turned down, and why.

Done well, those posts are useful. They help newer designers see that saying no is a normal part of the job, and they give readers a way to think about the kind of work they want. Done badly, they read as either a brag or a grudge, and the only person who comes out looking small is the writer. These notes are about writing the first kind.

Decide first whether it is yours to post

Before anything else, work out what you were given. If the brief arrived in a formal pitch or a long email thread, it may be covered by a non-disclosure agreement, or by the simple fact that parts of it were commercially sensitive. Our note on writing about client work you can't fully show covers how to think about that, and the same care applies even when you did not take the job in the end.

If no agreement was signed, you still owe the people who shared the brief a basic courtesy. They may have been thinking out loud. They may have described a business problem they would rather their competitors did not read about. The test is not whether you have the legal right to publish, but whether you would be comfortable if the person on the other end saw what you wrote and could place themselves in it.

If the honest answer is no, the post needs more work before it can go out. Change what needs changing, or hold it back.

Name the shape of the issue, not the client

A good turned-down post tells the reader what sort of issue sent you away without pointing at anyone in particular. The shape is what helps other designers; the name is only interesting as gossip.

Useful shapes to describe include:

• A timeline that did not fit the problem, such as three weeks for a full rebrand across a dozen touchpoints.
• A fee that did not fit the scope, after honest estimation.
• A role too narrow for the result expected, such as a logo asked for when what is really wanted is a product redesign.
• A sector you have decided not to work in.
• Decisions already made that you would have needed to reverse to do the work well.

Any of these can be written about honestly without identifying anyone. “A regional retailer in a crowded category” tells the reader enough. “A company whose founder was on the news last month” is a flag you are planting in public, and you should not plant it.

Make it about your own thinking, not their shortcomings

The trap is easy to fall into. You turned the work down, so by the time you sit down to write it the client’s version of the brief is the villain of the story. This is where most of these posts go off the rails.

Two small reframes help:

Describe the brief neutrally, then explain your side. Say what was asked, in plain words, as if the person who wrote it was in the room. Then describe what you concluded and why. “They wanted a rebrand in three weeks” becomes “The brief asked for a full brand refresh across six channels in three weeks. Reading it, I could see two ways to do it: at the pace they wanted, which would leave a lot of the work half-made, or at the pace I know the work needs, which would mean missing their launch. I would not have been proud of the first, so I said no.”

Keep the pronouns honest. Say “I decided” more often than “they refused”. Readers are quick to spot the difference between a designer explaining their own line and a designer using the post to score a point.

Our guide on giving design critique that is kind and useful has more on that tone: specific, measured, and never aimed at the person in a way you would not want aimed at you.

Give the reader something they can use

The reason a turned-down post is worth reading is that choosing work is hard, and most designers get taught almost nothing about it. Make the post do a job for the reader:

• Write down the short version of your own rule. “I will not take work I cannot do a good job on in the time offered” is a sentence a stranger can carry around.
• Show the arithmetic where you can. Not fees in detail, but the shape: how many hours the work would have taken against how many you had.
• Offer the alternative you proposed, if any. Sometimes the answer is not no, but a smaller piece of work, a longer timeline or a different starting point.
• Admit the real cost. Saying no has a price, and pretending otherwise does readers no favours.

A scenario, clearly invented, can do more work than a half-told real one. For example: imagine a studio asks a solo designer for a brand book and a website in five weeks for a flat fee. The designer costs it, finds six weeks of focused work in the brief, suggests a phased plan with the website following later, and walks away when the studio sticks to the original shape. None of that is a real project, but the moving parts are the sort of thing a reader can hold up against their own week.

Keep the door open

You wrote the post because the project was not right now. That does not mean it will not be right later, or that another project from the same people will not be a good fit. A few habits help:

• Do not use names, direct quotes or dates that would let a reader identify the people involved.
• End with what would make you say yes: the kind of brief, timeline or fee you would gladly take. That turns the post from a complaint into a soft prospectus for the work you want.
• If you can, write to the person who sent the brief before you post. A line saying “I am writing a general piece about choosing work; nothing in it points to you, but I wanted you to know” costs almost nothing and buys a lot of goodwill.

The community guidelines on RyeType rule out posts that identify or disparage a named client, and we moderate along those lines. Most of the work, though, is yours. If the post would make someone on the other end feel named in public, it needs another pass before it goes up.

What good looks like

When one of these posts lands well, a reader comes away with three things: a clear picture of the kind of problem that sent you away, a sense of how you thought about it, and a rule or two they can borrow. They do not come away with the client’s name, a grievance to pick up on your behalf, or the impression that your main skill is turning work down.

Write it the way you would want someone to write about the brief you sent out last year that did not quite come together. Honest about the issue, generous about the person on the other side, and more about your own thinking than about their faults. That is a post worth publishing, and a habit worth keeping.