How to brief a mural artist
Most mural projects don't fail at the wall, they fail at the brief. Vague briefs lead to mock-ups nobody wants, three rounds of revisions, and a launch date that slides by a month. A good brief is seven lines long. Here it is.
The seven-line template
Copy this. Paste it into WhatsApp, email, or a Google Doc. Fill in the blanks. Send.
- Wall: photo, dimensions if known, interior or exterior, surface (brick / smooth render / wood / metal).
- Use case: what's the wall for? Home feature, café, retail, brand activation, photo backdrop.
- Vibe: three adjectives, plus one or two visual references (Instagram links work well).
- Must-haves: logo? specific words? colours that have to appear? anything that absolutely cannot appear?
- Deadline: real date plus the reason (opening night, photoshoot, sale of property).
- Budget: a range you're comfortable with so we can design to it from day one.
- Decision maker: who signs off the mock-up, and when they're available.
The best briefs we've ever received were three sentences and a photo.
What each line is really doing
1. The wall
Half the design decisions come from the wall itself. Brick takes paint differently to smooth render. North-facing walls fade slower than south-facing. A 3 metre wall and a 30 metre wall need totally different design approaches. A photo and rough dimensions save us a site visit.
2. The use case
A café wall and a brand activation wall solve different problems. The café wall has to be photographed by every guest, every day, for years. The activation wall has to land on Instagram for one weekend. Same medium, completely different design priorities.
3. The vibe
"Bold and colourful" is not a vibe. "Bold, retro, a bit gross, like the cover of a 1990s skate mag" is a vibe. Adjectives + references beat moodboards alone, because adjectives force you to make a call.
4. Must-haves and no-gos
The thing the client forgets to mention until round two of revisions is always the thing that matters most. Tell us up-front: the brand red can't appear because the building next door is red. The phrase "we keep the change" has to be there because that's the café's catchphrase. The wall faces a school so no swearing, even stylised.
5. The deadline
"As soon as possible" tells us nothing. "We open on the 14th of June and the press are coming on the 12th" tells us everything. We can plan backwards from a real date and tell you whether it's doable, and what we'd need to compress.
Got a wall and a brief?
Drop us your seven lines on WhatsApp. We come back inside 24 hours, usually with a sketch.
Send the brief →6. The budget
The single most useful thing you can give an artist is a budget range. It tells us what to design. A £1,500 piece and a £15,000 piece are different in scope, complexity, and ambition. We'd rather know up front than design something you can't afford and then have to cut it back.
7. The decision maker
Mock-ups stall when there are three people who all need to sign off and only one of them has seen the brief. Tell us who has the final say, and roughly when they're around. We'll plan revisions to land in their week.
An example brief that worked
Real one, lightly edited. Took us four weeks from this message to finished wall:
- Wall: 4m x 2.4m feature wall, interior, smooth painted plaster (currently magnolia). [Photo attached.]
- Use case: living room of our flat in Hackney, so it has to be liveable not loud.
- Vibe: warm, organic, a bit weird. References: this Instagram post and this Pinterest board.
- Must-haves: at least one face in the design, has to look good in low light.
- No-gos: no text, no aerosol smell still in the room when our daughter goes to sleep that night.
- Deadline: done by 22 May because we're hosting a dinner on the 25th.
- Budget: £1,500 to £2,500.
- Sign-off: me, on WhatsApp.
Eighteen-word headlines and one photo would have worked too. The point isn't volume, it's specificity.
Three things to leave out
- "We've worked with [famous artist] before." Cool, but doesn't tell us anything about your wall.
- Twenty-image moodboards. If everything in the moodboard is the vibe, nothing in the moodboard is the vibe. Pick three references max.
- "Open to anything." No you're not. We promise.
Send us seven lines. We'll send you a sketch.