Content and design, will they ever get along?
Content and design haven’t always been the best of friends. They’ve often been kept apart, separated for arguing and not getting along. Or they haven’t even been allowed to play together at all.
Things however are changing. Increasingly, they’re being introduced to each other earlier and earlier, and left to their own devices, they’re finding they can be the best of friends.
My weak analogies of separated children who can’t play together aside, I do think the disciplines of content and design are in such a better place than they were even a couple of years ago.
People often question what the title of ‘content designer’ means and what its purpose is? To me it is a way of allowing content to have a seat at the table. It also recognises that content is more than just writing some words to fit into a design.
I have recently worked with some amazing UI and UX designers. It really was the first time some of us had worked so collaboratively, and the feedback I received was that they so appreciated having a content designer on the project. It allowed them to concentrate on their skillset, turning to me for the content expertise.
CoDes Brighton
The reason I’m writing this today is that I am heading to CoDes tonight, which is a new content and design forum in Brighton. One of the speakers tonight is my friend Tom Prior, who I worked with on my last project. He’s going to speak on his views of design and content collaboration and I really recommend anyone interested in this area to come along — tickets still currently available!
Tom has been such a great advocate of the role of content design and I think it’s so great that designers are becoming so aware of the need for content design on a design project. I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say!
