why content professionals and designers should be best buddies. and how to help it happen

Why Content Professionals and Designers

need to be best buddies, and how to help it

happen. Clara Guasch Fortuny

Content Strategy Barcelona MeetUp

2014 01 23

Design and Content:

Can’t live without you

Content comes first (ideally).

Content needs to be created

independently from design (ideally).

As professionals, we can keep content

and design separate.

For the end user, there is no content

without design.

Content content CONTENT

CONTENT Content Content

Dear Design,

Life without you doesn’t

make sense. Thank you

very much for listening,

understanding and

handling me with care.

Yours,

Good Content

1. What matters most? What’s less relevant?

1 Content and Design

http://www.parcdesalutmar.cat/hospitals/hospital-del-mar/

1. What matters most? What’s less relevant?

1 Content and Design

http://www.aiguesdebarcelona.cat/ca/web/web-aguas-de-barcelona/inicio

2. Where’s everybody looking?

1 Content and Design

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

2. Where’s everybody looking?

1 Content and Design

www.promentrada.com

3. Short paragraphs with one idea per

paragraph work best

1 Content and Design

www.cga.cat

5 main ideas

1 Content and Design

http://www.nancy-tunon.com/ca/escola_teatre/equip

3. Short paragraphs with one idea per

paragraph work best

4. Width counts

1 Content and Design

4. Width counts

1 Content and Design

4. Width counts

1 Content and Design

If a text is too narrow, people get tired.

If a text is too wide, people get lazy.

Let’s find a comfortable width for our text that can

help us read without getting a headache and without

having to move our heads to reach the end of the

line.

5. Light text on dark background is ok for

headings, titles and labels only.

1 Content and Design

http://uxmovement.com/content/when-to-use-white-text-on-a-dark-background.

6. Capital letters and underlined text are

difficult to read

1 Content and Design

THIS IS WAY MORE DIFFICULT TO

READ THAN THE THIRD LINE.

ESPECIALLY IF THE TEXT GETS

LONGER.

THIS IS MORE DIFFICULT TO READ

THAN THE THIRD LINE. ESPECIALLY

IF THE TEXT GETS LONGER.

This is easier to read than the previous

lines. Especially if the text gets longer.

7. Floating lists are no good

1 Content and Design

Help me read the introductory text of a list before I jump to

the first bullet.

A Content Strategy includes advice on: tone and style web structure and message hierarchy which content you need to create

and/or adapt how to take your users into account how to plan content creation

A Content Strategy includes advice on: tone and style web structure and message hierarchy which content you need to create

and/or adapt how to take your users into account how to plan content creation

8. Links and only links should look like links.

1 Content and Design

8. Links and only links should look like links.

1 Content and Design

If a link doesn’t look like a link, I won’t get to the page you

want me to see.

If something looks like a link but it isn’t, I get frustrated.

It’s nice to know when a link will kick me out of the page…

9. Adds and only adds should look like adds

1 Content and Design

9. Adds and only adds should look like adds

1 Content and Design

10. Videos, graphs, photos and forms need text

1 Content and Design

10. Videos, graphs, photos and forms need text

1 Content and Design

Vídeos

http://www.youtube.com/

10. Videos, graphs, photos and forms need text

1 Content and Design

http://www.bracafe.com/pedidos/index.htm

Dear Content,

What would I do

without you? Thank

you very much for

being meaningful,

consistent and ready

when I come in.

Yours,

Good Design

Designers and Content professionals

Fancy a cup of coffee?

It’s not about you or me.

It’s about the user.

Before the project...

2 Designers and Content Professionals

1. Explore

What other projects have they done?

How do they generally tackle digital projects?

How used are they to working with real content?

What do they feel about lorem ipsum?

Have they any experience working together with content

professionals?

What do they expect from you?

Before the project...

2 Designers and Content Professionals

2. Explain and share

Talk about how and why design is crucial for good content

to work.

Explain how you usually tackle projects.

Offer a list of crucial points to take into account when

designing for readable content.

Make yourself available for any question or doubt.

Talk positively about your previous experience with other

designers.

Share everything you know about the project that can be

useful for the designer.

Before the project...

2 Designers and Content Professionals

3. Foresee

What problems and issues are likely to arise?

Can you do anything to avoid or minimize them?

How are you going to handle them?

Before the project...

2 Designers and Content Professionals

4. Agree

Decide together the best way to proceed, taking into

account each other’s background.

More than likely, meeting more often at the beginning will

save a lot of time and problems in the long run.

During the project...

2 Designers and Content Professionals

1. Show interest and offer help

Show interest on the work that is being done.

Offer to discuss things together.

During the project...

2 Designers and Content Professionals

2. Appreciate

Acknowledge what’s really good in the design as it is and

work on making it even better.

Limit your critical comments on functional issues that affect

the messages (readability and usability).

Hint: ”and” is much better than “but”

During the project...

2 Designers and Content Professionals

3. Listen carefully

What can you learn from the designer’s view of the project?

Are you maybe asking for impossibles?

Be ready to partly give in, compromise.

During the project...

2 Designers and Content Professionals

4. Justify your comments

Don’t make comments based on your personal taste or

opinion.

Make critical comments based on usability, readibility and

your knowledge about the project.

Make it clear that you’re working to make it easier for the

user to find, read, understand and interact with the content.

Don’t offer design solutions (unless you’re a designer

yourself!). Hint at the problem, explain it well and ask how it

could be solved.

At the end of the project...

2 Designers and Content Professionals

1. Try to do some conscious learning

Think and talk about what has worked out well and what

problems and issues have arisen and why.

At the end of the project...

2 Designers and Content Professionals

2. Don’t forget to celebrate the good work done!

Whether content comes first, second

or last, it’s not complete until it has

shape and color.

Thank you

This document is subject to an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons license. It allows you to download, distribute and publicly present the document as long as you specify its title and author, and as long as it’s used non commercially. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en (C) Clara Guasch Fortuny

www.aclareix.com

clara.guasch@aclareix.com