Hacks: Decoding a Vague Commission Brief in Under Five Minutes

The brief arrived at 4:48 on a Friday. It said, in full: "Hi! We loved your work and would love to commission a piece for our new office. Something that feels like us — maybe abstract, maybe not. Open to ideas! Let us know your pricing and timeline. Excited!"

There are 43 words in that email and not one of them is a specification. The illustrator who got it has been in the field eleven years, and she told me her first thought was the one she has every time a brief like this lands: I'm about to spend three hours of my weekend trying to extract from a stranger what they actually want, and if I get it wrong I lose the job.

She has since developed a five-minute move that saves the weekend. It's a triangle of three questions. If the client can answer all three, you can work with them. If they can't, you can't — at least not yet. Failing the triangle is useful information, not a dead end.

This isn't a qualification script or a sales move. It's a tool for finding out whether a real project exists yet. Most vague briefs describe a project that doesn't exist yet. That's the whole problem.

The triangle: dimensions, deadline, deliverable format

Three questions. Only three. Every vague brief is missing at least one of them, and usually all three.

1. Dimensions. What are the actual physical or digital measurements? Not "for the office" — 40" × 60" framed. Not "for our homepage" — 1440 × 720 px hero image, retina-ready at 2880 × 1440. Not "a small batch" — 8 pieces. Without dimensions, you are being asked to commit to an amount of work without knowing how much work it is.

1. Deadline. What date does the client actually need this in their hands? Not "soon" — Thursday October 12th, before 5pm their time. "Flexible" is not a deadline. "ASAP" is not a deadline. "Before the launch" is not a deadline unless you know when the launch is. Clients without a real deadline either don't have a real project or have a real deadline they haven't admitted to yet.

1. Deliverable format. What are you handing over at the end, and in what form? A framed canvas? A 300dpi print-ready PDF? A layered Photoshop file with the background on a separate layer? A 4K TIFF plus three social crops? "The finished piece" is not a deliverable format. Clients who don't know the format don't yet know what they're going to do with the piece, and that's a red flag because it means the piece is being commissioned into a vacuum.

If a client can answer all three, you have a project. If they can answer two, you have a conversation. If they can answer one or zero, you have an inquiry, not a commission — and you are allowed to treat it that way.

Why these three

Not motivation, not mood, not style references, not budget — these three. They're load-bearing.

Dimensions are the only real unit of scope. A client who says "we want a painting for the office" and then, after you've quoted, adds "oh, and it should also work as the cover of our annual report" has changed the dimensions without calling it a change. If you locked in dimensions at the start, you can say: that's a separate piece. If you didn't, you can't.

Deadlines are the only real unit of urgency. Clients who can't give a deadline are either kicking the tires, waiting on an internal approval, or about to have a crisis date land on your head next Tuesday. All three are the same problem from your point of view: no date to plan against.

Deliverable format is the only real unit of completion. "Done" is not an agreement between two people; "a 300dpi CMYK PDF plus a layered PSD plus three 2048px social crops, via Dropbox link by 5pm PT October 12th" is.

How to ask without being rude

Most freelancers don't ask these questions because the questions feel pushy when you type them. A bare list of three interrogatives signals that you're screening the client.

That's fine — you should be. But the tone can be warm and the content can still be the triangle. The move is to frame the three questions as helping you quote correctly. Quoting is your problem, not theirs, so if you frame the triangle as your own need, they don't feel tested.

Here's a reply that would work for the illustrator's Friday-at-4:48 email:

“Thanks so much for reaching out — I'd love to hear more. To put together a quote and timeline that's actually useful, there are three things that help me the most:

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“- Size. Roughly what dimensions are you thinking? Even a rough range ("somewhere around 3 feet wide") is enough at this stage.

“- When you need it. Is there a specific date you're working toward — an office open, a launch, a board meeting? Even a soft date is useful.

“- What you'd like to end up with. A framed piece on the wall? A digital file you can print in-house? Both?

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“Once I know those three, I can send over a quote and some rough direction ideas that match what you're actually trying to do. Looking forward to hearing more!

Notice the small moves: "roughly," "even a rough range," "soft date is useful." These aren't hedges — they're permissions. The client is being told they can give imperfect answers. Perfect-answer demands get ignored. Imperfect-answer invitations get replies.

What the answers tell you

Here's the part that makes the triangle more than a form.

If they answer all three, you're working with a real client. They have a real wall, a real date, and a real plan for what to do with the finished piece. Quote the work. You're in business.

If they answer two out of three, something is still being decided internally. Quote a one-hour discovery session instead of the full project. Billable, real work. You're not giving free advice — you're helping the client turn an idea into a project.

If they answer one out of three, the project doesn't exist yet. Name that out loud, kindly. "Sounds like details are still being figured out — reach back out when you have a date and a target size, and I'll have real numbers ready." Door open, weekend saved.

If they answer zero, the email is probably not from a client at all. One polite line and move on.

The 60-second technique

Next time a vague brief lands, do this before you reply:

1. Read once and count every sentence that sounds like a specification. Zero means fully vague; one or two means partially vague (harder to detect, more common).
2. Write the three questions — size, timing, format — in that order, with warm framing: "rough range," "soft date," "what you'd like to end up with."
3. Do not quote, pitch, or propose yet. Not a sketch, not a price. The triangle comes first.
4. Send. If the reply answers all three, quote. If not, use the decision tree above.

If you want this in one move — if the brief is long, buried in slide decks, or written in the kind of marketing language that hides the actual ask — paste the whole thing into 🖼️Art Commission Brief Decoder. It's built for exactly this: it extracts the known dimensions, deadline, and deliverable format, tells you which of the three are missing, and drafts the follow-up email that asks for the missing pieces in the warm-framing style above. It won't quote for you — that's still your job — but it will cut the three-hour weekend decoding session down to about four minutes.

If the brief turns into a working relationship and then that relationship starts producing scope-creep asks a few weeks in, the companion piece on How to De-Spike a Difficult Client Email has the next-stage formula. The triangle prevents half of those emails. The de-spike handles the other half.

The Friday at 4:48

The illustrator replied to the office brief with the three questions in about six minutes. The client wrote back Monday with a size (roughly 48" × 36"), a deadline (office opens November 4th, delivery by October 28th), and a format (framed canvas, installed by their preferred installer). Real project, real quote.

What she liked best wasn't the project — it was the Friday evening she didn't lose to drafting in the dark. She sent her reply, closed the laptop, and made dinner. Monday morning she had a brief that had turned itself into a project over the weekend.

That's the move. The vague brief is not your problem to solve alone. You have three questions. The client has the answers. Five minutes of asking and you'll know whether the project exists yet — and if it doesn't, you'll know exactly what has to happen before it does.

a-gnt — by system-agnt