What to send in a brief

Send the brief to admin@sycgeeks.ca. You do not need an account. You do not need a Square booking first. A one-page note that a Vancouver studio can price in CAD is enough. Who is this for in Canada? What do they buy or book? What should they do on the first visit — call, pay, reserve, or write? If you cannot name the action, we will spend the first week finding it, and that week will be on the quote.

A Burnaby salon brief can be four sentences: we cut and colour on Hastings; clients already pay with Square at the chair; we need Thursday evening bookings in English before the holiday weekend; the current site still says walk-ins only. A Montreal retailer brief can be four sentences: we ship Canada-wide from a warehouse in Saint-Laurent; we invoice in CAD; checkout must show French receipts and the right HST for Ontario orders; the theme we bought cannot do that. Both of those we can price. “Make it modern” we cannot.

A messy brief is still a brief if it names audience, offer, and the action you want this month. An invisible brief is a logo, a vibe, and a hope that we will invent the product. We have been pricing this way since 2015. We will write back and ask for the missing facts. We will not invent a conversion so the calendar looks busy. If you would rather talk than write, book a Square slot on Pacific time and bring the same facts. We will not spend the hour guessing the catalog.

Name the audience as a person who lives somewhere. “Women 25–40 who value authenticity” is not an audience. “A nurse in Surrey who wants a Saturday cut and will pay in CAD on Square” is. “A buyer in Toronto comparing two Montreal brands who needs the HST line to look legal” is. If you serve more than one person, pick the one who pays for this build. The other person can wait for an add-on. Two heroes on day one is how a homepage lies.

Name the offer the way a client would say it. “Discovery conversation” is better than “Tier 1 sync.” “Men’s cut, 45 minutes, $65 CAD” is better than “premium grooming experience.” Put duration and CAD next to the name if you sell time. Put the product name, the size, and the province you ship from if you sell goods. If the offer is still a spreadsheet, attach the spreadsheet. We would rather price from an ugly sheet than from a slogan.

Name the action you want this month, not the action you want in a year. Book, pay, call, or write. If this month is a market stall in Gastown, the action may be “show hours and the Square booking link.” If this month is fiscal year-end in Ontario, the action may be “take a CAD deposit with a correct receipt.” A blog, a loyalty app, and a second marketplace are not this month unless you have already paid for them. We will not hide them inside a marketing-site quote.

If two actions fight — book a consult and buy a kit on the same first screen — say which one pays the rent in the next ninety days. We pick that one for launch. The other becomes a line on a later add-on, about 25 percent off if you have care ($450 CAD a month or $4,500 CAD a year). Saying this in the brief saves a week of polite disagreement in design.

Attach the current site, or five screenshots if the site is the problem. The checkout that fails on a French label is more valuable than “make it modern.” The booking page that still says 2019 hours is more valuable than “we need a refresh.” Circle the lie. Write one sentence about what a client does when they hit it. We can price a repair we can see. We cannot price a feeling.

Send the brand files you trust: the typeface you actually licensed, the logo in a vector, the colours you print on the bag. Do not send a Pinterest board of “vibes” and a folder of every iPhone photo from the last retreat. We do not use stock people photographs. If you have no photos of the room, the product, or the work, say so. Illustration is how this studio fills a page. A stock handshake on a Burnaby salon site is something we will refuse.

If the current checkout, POS, or booking tool is the system of record, name the login owner. We would rather inherit Square or Shopify than invent a second catalog. If inventory lives in a warehouse tool, say which one. A Montreal retailer who already pays for a warehouse feed should not also get a handmade product grid that will be wrong by Saturday. Screenshots of the admin — even ugly ones — stop us from quoting a duplicate.

List the languages that must be correct on day one. English, French, or both. Bilingual work is not a toggle. It changes information architecture, legal copy, button widths, and how we test forms. A button that fits “Book” may not fit “Prendre rendez-vous.” Receipts, error messages, and the privacy page are part of the language list. A checkout that fails in French is a Canadian product bug, not a translation ticket for later.

If you only have English copy on day one, say so. We can still structure French routes and ship a complete first language. We will not pretend a machine dump is a second site. If Quebec or a federal audience must be able to finish a task in French at launch, that belongs in the CAD number. If French is a later add-on, write the date you think you will have a human reviewer. Care members pay about 25 percent less on that add-on. Machine French on a legal page is something we refuse.

Name who will approve each language. One English approver and one French approver is a calendar. A committee that “will glance at both” is a delay. We publish the workflow in your dashboard so you can see when we are blocked on copy. If a week slips because French legal is still in a lawyer’s inbox, we write that in the notes. We do not silently compress the English site to wait.

Attach any legal constraint that touches the page: health claims, alcohol, professional colleges, reserved titles, insurance wording. A clinic that cannot say “cure” on a service page should say so in the brief, not in week nine. A retailer selling wine into another province should say so before we design a cart. We would rather design for the rule than retrofit a banner after a complaint. If you have a PDF from the college, attach the PDF.

PIPEDA is about purpose. If the brief asks for a chatbot, a newsletter, or a “just in case” phone field, write why you will use that data. We will not drop a tracker because a template did. Chat and analytics are still personal information. The privacy page has to say so in the languages you ship. WCAG work — contrast, labels, keyboard paths, real alt text — is launch work on a public Canadian site, not a later package. Mention if a staff member uses a screen reader. That changes how we test, not whether we test.

We refuse to write medical, legal, or financial claims you did not supply. We refuse to hide a disclaimer in six-point type. We refuse stock photos of “diverse teams” as a substitute for your actual staff or illustration. If you cannot send a claim, we will write the service as a fact: what you do, in which city, in which currency. That is enough for a first page. It is also honest.

Name how you take money today. Square at a counter, Stripe in an app, PayPal as a side door, Interac e-Transfer for invoices, Apple Pay on a phone, an optional ETH wallet for a specific client — write the list. We connect to what you already pay for. We do not stack five buttons because a competitor did. Card and a familiar Canadian rail come first. Crypto is never the only way to pay a salon in Burnaby or a shop in Montreal.

Name the tax you must collect. GST on a BC service is not the same as HST on a good shipped to Ontario. If you only serve Vancouver, say so. If you ship Canada-wide, list the provinces. We will not pick a theme and then discover you need provincial rates. A Canadian store that looks finished and cannot collect tax correctly is not finished. Put the CRA numbers you already have in the brief if you want them on the invoice footer. Do not invent a rate in the copy; we will not either.

Our quote, contract, and catalog are CAD. The number you approve is the number you pay. Processors still take their Canadian fee. If you are outside Canada, we still quote in CAD unless we agree otherwise in writing before work starts. International work is converted on the quote, not as a surprise on the card. If you want to pay by Interac e-Transfer or an ETH wallet, say so in the brief so the quote names the rail. We will not switch rails the night before launch.

If you already have care in mind, say whether you want monthly ($450 CAD) or yearly ($4,500 CAD). Care is not required to start. It changes the price of later add-ons by about 25 percent and it puts a reserved studio hour on the calendar. A store without someone watching the processor is a weekend problem waiting for Monday. You can add care at checkout or later. Mentioning it in the brief just means the quote shows the line.

If you have a hard date — a market, a fiscal year, a lease, a college inspection, a holiday weekend — write it. Write whose date it is. “We would love it by spring” is not a date. “The lease on Main Street starts 1 November and the booking link must work that morning” is a date. We would rather decline a fantasy timeline than miss a real one after you have printed the flyer. Six to ten weeks is common for a focused marketing site when copy arrives. Checkout and an API add weeks.

The delay we see most is not engineering. It is waiting for product photos, legal pages, or a price list that still lives in a spreadsheet. If you want speed, assign one person who can approve. Put that name in the brief. Put the hours they keep in Pacific time, or say they are in Toronto or Halifax so we plan the overlap. We will not hold a Friday deploy because a campaign starts Monday and the French receipt is still a draft.

If the date is already too close, write that too. We will say no, or we will quote a thinner first launch: hours, the action, the processor, one language. A thinner honest site that takes a booking beats a wide site that ships broken. We refuse to compress tax, privacy, and French into a weekend because a poster already went to print. Call +1 (672) 200-7924 on a weekday only if production is already down. A brief is still an email.

Email is the default. Put the facts in the body. Attach screenshots, the price list, the college PDF, the brand files. Do not send a 40-page RFP unless a public body requires it; even then, put the conversion, the deadline, and the systems on page one. If you already have a dashboard login, you can also drop a note on a project after we open one. Do not bury a new brief inside an old project’s notes. That is a new quote.

You can book a Square appointment with no account if you want to talk the brief through. Pacific time, Vancouver studio. Bring the same page you would have emailed. We confirm through Square. If you later become a client, the booking appears under Appointments next to projects, workflows, and purchases. Students on your team finish orientation before they log hours. Wallet login is a signed message; email login is the other door. Neither is required to send the first page.

What happens next is a scoped quote in CAD, or a short list of questions. We do not start production on a handshake. We do not write code while the languages and the processor are still undecided. If the brief is enough, you will see what we will ship, what we will not, and how care works. If it is not enough, we will say which sentence is missing: the audience, the offer, the action, the screenshot, the language, the date, or the system you already pay for. Send that sentence. Then we can price.

Keep the brief where you can find it. After you approve, those facts become the project notes and the workflow steps. The next person at your company should be able to read the first page and know why we built a booking button instead of a blog. That is the job of a brief a studio can price. Audience, offer, action this month. Screenshots. Languages. The rest is supporting material. Send it to admin@sycgeeks.ca and we will answer on Pacific time.