How to Brief a Designer for a Cafe Screen Creative
You booked a screen in a coffee shop, you have the idea — and then the longest part begins: the creative. You tell your designer "make an ad for our place," get back something with tiny text stretched across the frame, a logo taking up half the screen, and no call to action at all. Then come three rounds of revisions, a week of back-and-forth, while the slot you already paid for plays nothing useful.
The problem is almost never the designer. It's the brief. An indoor screen in a coffee shop isn't an Instagram banner or a business card: it has its own rules of distance, time and silence. If you don't hand over those rules, the designer does what they know how to do — a beautiful layout for a phone screen, which is unreadable on a cafe wall. Below is exactly what to put in the brief, a ready-to-copy template, and the typical mistakes that cost you extra iterations.
First, know what you're ordering the creative for
Before the brief, answer this in one sentence: what should a person do after seeing the screen? Not "learn about us," but a concrete action — scan the QR and grab a discount, walk through the door next door, download the app, save the address. Everything else in the brief follows from that answer. If you can't state it yourself, the designer certainly won't guess it.
One creative = one action. Don't try to cram the menu, a promo, delivery and a new branch into 15 seconds. People in a cafe glance at the screen with peripheral vision for a few seconds — they'll absorb exactly one thought.
What to put in the technical part of the brief
This is the part advertisers forget most often — and it saves the most revisions. Give your designer:
| Parameter | What to specify | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Screen orientation | Vertical or horizontal | A vertical-screen layout can't just be "turned sideways" |
| Duration | 15 seconds (standard indoor loop) | The designer plans the number of frames and pacing around this |
| Sound | None — the screen plays silent | All information must be visual, no "voiceover" |
| Viewing distance | 2–4 meters (a person seated at a table) | Sets the minimum font size and line weight |
| File format | MP4 (video) or PNG/JPG (static) | So you don't get a layout in a format that won't upload |
| Safe margins | ~5–7% padding from the edges | So text isn't "cropped" on different screens |
The core readability rule: big text, high contrast, at most one or two sentences per frame. If you squint at the layout from across the room and can't read the main message in 2 seconds, it needs reworking — and it's better to say so to the designer up front.
What to put in the content part of the brief
The technical frame is half of it. The other half is content, and here the designer shouldn't be inventing things for you:
- Goal — in one sentence (see above: what action you want).
- Offer — a concrete proposition, not a slogan. Not "great coffee," but "−30% on your first order until the end of July."
- One call to action (CTA) — "Scan the QR," "Come next door," "Book a table." One, not three.
- QR code — where it lives in the layout (usually the lower third), how big, where it leads. Give the designer a ready QR or the link to generate it from, and add a UTM tag so you can count the clicks later.
- Brand assets — logo in vector (SVG/PDF), brand colors (HEX), font. Without these the designer will pick "something similar," and you'll notice too late.
- Tone and examples — 2–3 layouts you like (and 1 you don't — that saves the most time).
Ready-to-use brief template — copy and fill in
BRIEF FOR A CAFE SCREEN CREATIVE
1. Goal (what action the viewer takes): _______
2. Offer (concrete proposition): _______
3. Call to action (one): _______
4. QR leads to: _______ UTM tag: _______
5. Mandatory on-screen text: _______
6. Logo (file): _______ Colors (HEX): _______ Font: _______
7. Examples I like: _______ What I DON'T like: _______
TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS:
- Orientation: vertical / horizontal (confirm on HostAd)
- Duration: 15 seconds
- Sound: none (silent screen)
- Viewing distance: 2–4 meters → large font, high contrast
- Format: MP4 or PNG/JPG
- Safe margins: 5–7% padding from edges
- Rule: one thought per frame, readable in 2 seconds
A filled-in brief like this takes 10 minutes and usually cuts two of the three rounds of revisions.
Typical mistakes in a brief
- "Make something nice" — with no goal or offer, the designer makes it "nice," not "effective."
- Tiny text — the number-one cause of rework. From 3 meters, small text is unreadable.
- Three messages in one frame — the viewer can't keep up, and the layout works for none of them.
- Forgot the screen orientation — and got a horizontal layout for a vertical screen.
- Counted on sound — indoor screens play silent, the text has to carry all the information.
- QR with no UTM — the creative shipped, but counting clicks is now impossible.
For more on what works in the first seconds, see The First 3 Seconds: a Hook for Video on a Cafe Screen, and for DOOH design principles, see Creative Design for DOOH. If there's no budget for a designer — you can shoot the creative on a phone.
How HostAd simplifies creative prep
Half the brief is the technical parameters of a specific screen: orientation, size, where the screen stands in the room. On HostAd this data is visible before you book — you open the screen map, pick a coffee shop or bar in Kyiv, and immediately see the venue's specs and the owner's transparent price, with no agency markups and no proposals over email.
That means you can write the brief before you even pay: you know the screen's orientation, you understand the setting (a craft coffee shop, a bar, a local audience within walking distance), and you hand the designer exact inputs instead of "somewhere on a cafe screen." And because booking is month-by-month, you can launch the first creative as a one-month test, look at the QR analytics, and refine it for the next period — no annual contract.
HostAd is a network of indoor screens in Kyiv's craft coffee shops and bars: Coffee Gang, ZHNYVA, PEOPLE KAVA, Beer&Cool and other venues right next to your customers. You see each one on the map, with its price and specs.
Next — one step
Preparing an ad for a cafe screen? Pick the venue first — and you'll get the technical data for your brief right away. Open the HostAd screen map, find a coffee shop in your district, and write the brief with the screen's real parameters instead of guessing.