Design considerations for content

Some web designers may think they are perfectly justified in glazing over this chapter. It is

after all, about content, not design, or even traditional information architecture. But the

reality is that the two elements are fundamentally bound, like hydrogen and oxygen atoms

in a water molecule. In fact, their symbiosis is driving many designers to become increas-

ingly conscious of web content—what messaging works and what doesn’t, how people

react to typography decisions, how people scan content within a page, and so forth. Every

day new research offers deeper insight into how the masses interact with content. Those

theories and best practices filter down and permeate the decisions driving how interfaces,

navigation elements, body text, and more are actually designed.

In a traditional marketing structure, designers design and writers write. Large organizations

might even have a dedicated copywriter for the Web. A medium-sized business might

retain a copywriter who handles both print and web content. But in a small company, one

person could easily comprise the entire in-house marketing team, and their job is to both

write copy and get it live on the site.

Whatever the case, it is in a designer’s best interest to read the content. At best, they can

work proactively with the copywriter to craft better messaging; at a minimum, under-

standing the text can only help them appreciate the company’s needs, which will ulti-

mately result in a stronger design.

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CONTENT

Insist on copy—refute lorem ipsum

Designers everywhere have a familiar friend in ancient Latin text. For hundreds of years,

Cicero’s De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum has provided printers and designers a content

doppelganger: the infamous passage containing the words lorem ipsum. This once obscure

text now finds its way into countless design projects as meaningless filler copy. It suppos-

edly approximates typical character distribution in an average passage of English text, and 2

is intended to force the viewer’s eyes to focus on the design of the text without getting

hung up on the actual words.

While the technique has merit—especially when testing typefaces—designing a website

without real content does a disservice to everyone, especially the designer. Imagine a mas-

ter picture framer carving a new frame without knowing what the painting looks like, only

that it’s about 3 by 2 feet and has some red in it. While it can be done—and maybe even

done well if the framer guesses right—the end product will not be anywhere close to its

potential without understanding the context of the art.