Content and Design Must Work Together to Communicate as One

Posted By : Sarah Musselman   Posted On : October 4th, 2011
Topics : Business Development, Content Development, Design, Website Marketing

Design without Content

Imagine this: you are at the supermarket, skimming the racks of glossy magazines, and one happens to grab your attention. Not only because of its breathtakingly beautiful cover, but because the headlines make you want to open it right then and there, in aisle eight next to the dog food, to devour the contents of the magazine. You know that every word, sentence, and paragraph will be four dollars well spent in the checkout line. However, before you commit yourself to this purchase, you open the magazine to find nothing but blank pages. You scramble through the pages of the magazine, flip it upside, and shake it by its spine only to see that it was nothing more than a pretty thing that caught your eye. How can this be?

In reality, you will likely never encounter a magazine that wasn’t filled back-to-back with shiny words and pictures. In other words, a magazine will surely capture your attention with its design, but it will retain your attention with its content. Content and the way it is presented through design are essential in any medium that needs to communicate a message, idea, story, or solution to a user. A website is no exception.

The Problem

Lately within the web community, there has been more passionate discussion about where exactly content development fits into the web development puzzle. It seems to be the jigsaw piece that gets thrown back in the box for another piece, because it just doesn’t seem to fit anywhere just yet. Content development often gets treated the same way; it is an afterthought, a delayed reaction during the web development process.

The problem seems to be, where exactly does content development fit into the web development process? Should content be written during the design phase? Should content be written after the development phase? Or maybe once website testing is finished and content is all that remains before the website can be launched to the public?

More and more web designers and developers are pushing for content to be written during the design phase. Not only are some designers crossing their arms and rejecting the idea of placeholder text in design compositions, but some are requesting that content be delivered before design even begins. The belief that is shared among these designers is that without meaningful content, it is impossible to deliver a design that most effectively communicates the content. And if content is as equally important as design, why shouldn’t they feel this way?

However, there are still those who believe that placeholder text has its place in the design phase and that content is not necessarily required. The fact that most websites are developed on content management systems lends itself to the idea that the content is easily modifiable by the user. Therefore, a design should be dynamic and able to adapt to changing content without sacrificing the overall message.

Although the discussion of content development has the tendency to ignite strong reactions from individuals on both sides of the fence, it is universally agreed upon that content and design need to work together to communicate as one.

The Solution

There is no correct answer as to where exactly content development needs to fit into the web development process. Every project is unique in that its budget, timeline, or constraints may prevent content from being developed until the very end. In a perfect world, content should be proactively pursued at the beginning of a project to understand what needs to be written, when it will written, who will need to write it, and how the content will relate to the message, idea, story, or solution that you are communicating to the user.

One way to make the process of developing content easier is to create a content matrix. Not only will a content matrix hold you accountable for the content that will need to be developed for each page within the website, but it will also provide a visual representation of all the opportunities you have to engage the user. This makes the process of developing content seem much more organized and thoughtful. Likewise, it also helps to stimulate the dialogue between the designer and content writer to make certain that design and content are working together to communicate as one.

Content is as Important as Design

Without meaningful content, the mediums in which we communicate would cease to exist. If every book, newspaper, and magazine was bound in covers designed to visually excite and engage us, every single one would be meaningless without content bound and inked inside the white, leafy pages. After all, wouldn’t it simply be decoration? What purpose does that serve in communication?

A website is no exception. Without content, a beautifully designed website is nothing more than a decoration. A website’s purpose is to serve as a source of information, which means users demand and will continue to demand content that has value. However, this content is only meaningful if it articulates a specific message, idea, story, or solution to the user by working together with a solid design. It is often said that content is king, but it is equally important to say that design is the castle in which the king resides. We need design to captivate our attention and kick-start a pleasant and visually stimulating user experience that knocks us off our feet. However, we need content to maintain that attention and keep us there, sitting on the floor, locked, engaged, and wanting more.

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