As a designer, a major part of my day apart from designing screens is communicating with different stakeholders, including clients, developers, my boss, or colleagues. Communicating my ideas and my thoughts effectively is a crucial part of my job.
How does writing come into the picture? Almost 70% of all the communication I do in my day is via text, emails, blogs, case studies, and even the copy I write for my designs. Now all of those reasons aside, here’s why you, as a designer, learn to write for the sake of your designs.
1. To avoid lorem ipsum
Your designs were created for real users and to convey a message that means something. Using lorem ipsum limits your design’s understanding, and you’re better off using the content available on other websites as placeholder content. By writing your content for your designs, you effectively convey what kind of content you intend to have there.
I write dummy content by myself as it makes the job of the content writers easier, so they understand what kind of content or vibe I am looking for. You can now get better feedback as the purpose of your content is more clear, and hence the design is better understood.
2. The content is a part of your design
Whether you like it or not, most of the internet is filled with words. Words are a medium of communication that isn’t going away anytime soon. When you want your designs to be pixel-perfect and have the right colors in the right places, remember that the content is a part of that design. The content is the most crucial part of your design and needs to be perfect too. We still rely on words where the chances of being misunderstood are high. Your design will communicate effectively if your content is on point.
3. To add one more skill to your arsenal
As designers, we’re already expected to learn other skills to complement the skills that we’ve already mastered. This also makes it easier for us to understand and communicate with content writers who will add the relevant words to designs later on. At our digital design agency, we are specialists in our domains but know enough about others to take on tasks when needed. This doesn’t just make you more employable but also makes you a better designer. I’ll explain how in the next step.
4. To churn out designs quicker
Learning to write makes you a better designer, as a designer’s job isn’t just to create and ideate but also to share and communicate those ideas. Learning to write will help the content writers on your team to write content quicker as you will have done most of the thinking for them.
When I design a website, I make sure the content used as placeholders makes sense in the design so when we’re on a strict timeline, the content writers can make changes only where necessary, and this saves a lot of valuable time that can be used for more projects and have time to yourself.
5. Cause why not
Cause why not? You’ve come so far by learning a lot of random stuff on the way. I’ve learned so many things out of mere curiosity, and it has always benefited me. As designers, or even as contributing members of society, we must always learn more so we can serve more.
As a designer, you’re bound to work with or communicate with content writers. Reach out to them for guidance. The more you start treating writing as an integral part of the design process, the more apparent its usefulness will become to you. Start with a small blog piece, maybe, baby steps. If not, we are always there to help, and very easy to reach out.
Have a good day!
