What is Content Design?
A Content Designer is a writer that knows how to craft content for the web by using different tools and working together with a team of developers, designers and experts. But why should you hire a Content Designer, and what can you expect from this person?
The origin of Content Design
It all started in the UK with a Designer that is now well known in the industry as Sarah Richards, now Sarah Winters. She and her team redesigned the UK government site, and when they did, they used an approach that is now known as Content Design.
Why it’s called Content Design
While working at the project for the UK government site, Sarah started to call the discipline Content Design. To revalue Content People, the term Designer came in, that made clear that a Content Person that works for the web can’t be only busy with words nowadays. If you write for the web, not only plays the audience an important part, also the design comes in to support your message.
In the past content writers have been treated like someone that fills in gaps. That design and text have to be created together, makes total sense, as the person who writes, also needs to know for whom ze is doing it and how the page will look like to get the right message across. So if you hire a Content Designer, you will get someone on board, that doesn’t only write, but also designs experiences with it.
What you can expect from a Content Designer
A Content Designer is someone that comes from outside and has a fresh look at your website and content. Instead of being a sprinter or long-distance runner, a Content Designer will be able to do both and get an objective overview of your content by research, asking the right questions and getting the right people on board. The person will be working with analytics, to support the decisions and also to have a solid argumentation for suggestions. As someone that puts himself in the shoes of the user, ze will be able to create together with its team the best content for your audience.
Why a Content Designer and not a UX Writer or Content Strategist?
A Content Designer is working closely with product strategy and design. What kind of features and requirements do the strategy and design have to fulfil? Ze will discuss that with users and stakeholders and get the content done that your user needs.
UX Writing as a function is the writing activity, where we choose the words. What happens typically with active design and usually in sprints. However, a Content Designer works as a UX Writer and the other way around. And a Content Strategist is the one that asks the smart questions, connects all the different stakeholders in an organization, something that the Content Designer does as well, but then moves on with writing – something that is typically not part of the strategic job.
Why Content Design is democratizing information
Writing simple and short copy is helping millions of people to access your content. Think of dyslexic people or the ones with reading difficulties. By using complicated words and complex sentences, you exclude those people, although information should be accessible for everyone.
Being Swiss, I grew up in a small country that has probably the most democratic political system in the world. Democracy is in our DNA. If you want to change things for the better, you collect signatures and get all the Swiss citizens to decide whether your idea should be considered or not. In that sense, everybody has a voice and your opinion matters and has a value.
Why Content Design is giving a voice
Content Design is quite the same when it comes to giving a chance to overthink a status quo. You look at things with a fresh look and are starting a conversation for a change. Complex topics become accessible by translating them into the simple copy. Democracy is listening to others ideas and opinions. It’s starting a dialogue for a better solution. So is Content Design. It’s about giving a voice to the user and readers on the internet, that is invisible and about opening up instead of narrowing down.
Content Design helps in improving accessibility. That is a democratic act. It’s time that this discipline is becoming visible too.
Claudia Müller
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