21 this strikes a chord

I am leaving my job at the end of this month, and looking back over the past few years, we were all a little surprised at how much writing I’ve been doing. It started as mere editing of pages and pages of stodgy, third-person academic writing. But now, there’s regular rewrites and new content generation on an almost-daily basis. We had to include it in the job description.

Even with a bevy of writers on staff, the designer is working with the final iteration on a regular basis. A good designer ends up living and working with every part of that interface for weeks or months at a time. The instinct to refine the interface, whether it’s the pixels or the text, can’t be ignored.

posted at 05:43 pm on May 10, 2006 by ari brown

22 Write like a human being

To respond to Benjamin Fleegle’s question:

How do we go about writing engaging, approachable text for a company whose values are formal and traditional?

It’s simple. Write like a human being.

Whenever possible I get clients to actually read their content out loud. Text that comes out sounding stiled, awkward, pretentious, or full of crap is impossible to hide when spoken out loud.

I do this all the time when writing, no matter who the audience. No matter who you’re writing for, text is a conversation that needs to sound as good out loud as it does being read. Otherwise it has the potential to be like that boring ass that corners you at a party and drones on and on about something that nobody else but he cares about.

posted at 07:53 pm on May 10, 2006 by Neil Lee

23 Absolutely agree

As a hybrid writer-designer, I totally agree that (a) words matter hugely, and (b) one can’t expect text written for print media to transfer successfully to the web.

Here are two sources that I often quote to support recommendations to write text specifically for the web, and for the type of person that the site is aimed at:
(1) The book “Don’t make me think: a common sense approach to web usability” by Steve Krug (now in it’s second edition)
(2) Jakob Nielson’s website at http://www.useit.com/

posted at 07:57 pm on May 10, 2006 by Catherine Williams

24 Use Minimalist Copy

First impressions are heavily influenced by page copy. Especially when users “bounce” without exploring your site.

First impressions also seem to last the longest, unfortunately. But sometimes we can use this to our advantage.

If the copy is good, remember to keep it byte size so we can absorb 100% of it while quickly scanning the page.

Oh, and add emphasis to important points/keywords so people who already know can quickly learn what’s new and move on. This also helps with SEO.

Great article! :)

posted at 10:09 pm on May 10, 2006 by Mike Smullin

25 I felt the same way...

I felt the same way about istockphoto – their text has a special magic to it too, something to do with being very open and frank with their audience.

posted at 11:03 pm on May 10, 2006 by Matt Williams

26 Designers as writers?

Every agency I worked at there was a very distinct line. There are writers. There are designers and never the twain shall meet. At my last job, designers were beyond rude rewritting copy that was so unbelievably bad and cheesy that it was offensive to even look at it. You don’t want a writer telling you how to design or choose a color do you? Yes, a fab website is a good marriage between writing and design and it should be treated as such. Let those with the experience do their job yet work as team. As a writer who knows design it was very difficult to fit in my appropriate slot, depending on the job I took but I did it. I’ve seen too many pens fly into the eye of a designer who dared write copy. And I’ve seen too many PMS charts slash the throats of writers that dared spout out, “you know, I wrote this copy and gave you direction on what stock photo to use.”

posted at 11:50 pm on May 10, 2006 by Dasheekee Jones

27 Shine on You Crazy Diamond

I agree. When you inject personality into your website you give it something wonderful—a cutting edge. Wabita.

posted at 12:16 am on May 11, 2006 by Richard Anderson

28 Why knowing how to write when the process of creat

I think this need of knowing how to write don’t depends only on the designer, or the opposite. It depends directly on how the company is organized. If the process isn’t strictly linear, and depends directly on writers and designers integration, knowing something about each other work would be a pre-requisite of hiring.

When the content is finished and the second step is the visual design, the consequence is that the team maybe would never met, even working side by side. They don’t think about what they’re doing, they don’t need to share opinions.

posted at 12:58 am on May 11, 2006 by Ricardo Augusto

29 Untitled

True, but do designers (especially the ones you’re trying to address) generally write copy as well as writers? Derek’s a decent, warm storyteller, and his websites will end up that way, too. But I see too many sites with bad spelling, grammar, punctuation etc. and that detracts from the experience just as much.

posted at 11:48 am on May 11, 2006 by Robert Andrews

30 Lorem ipsum ad tedium

I absolutely agree, the amount of hassle we’ve had in our house over copywriting. It’s no-ones responsibility so the buck gets passed around.

I understand the necessity for dummy text in the early stages of the design process (detest Lorum Ipsum, use recipes instead), but for the experience as a whole the design and the copy are intrinsically related. Talk about deisgn and imagery being intuitive or suggestive, how about words. What’s more intuitive than that?

posted at 11:52 am on May 11, 2006 by Pete Boere