Designing words

Writing is designing; designing is writing.

Meg Roberts
Sep 9, 2018 · 5 min read

When you tell people you’re a writer at a design firm, they look at you like you’re the black sheep in the family. The square in a room of circles. The feathered quill in a case of HB pencils.

It’s odd, because there are actually library-loads of writers in this industry.

They’re just sometimes operating under pseudonyms: copywriters, content managers, narrative designers, creative strategists, content strategists and so on.

And even if writing isn’t in your job description, words are everywhere: from the emails we send to the conversations we have. We all tell stories; we tell them at home in the shape of jokes and anecdotes. We tell them at work as case studies — stories about the past — and proposals — stories about the future.

So we’re all writers, really.

It me! (And you!)

But there are particular similarities between good design and good writing

Fundamentally, it all comes from the same place.

It comes from research. It comes from understanding people inside out — whether you think of them as users, readers or customers. It comes from putting what they need first, ahead of what you want to show them. It comes from meticulous planning — from beginnings, middles and ends. It comes from understanding ‘pain points’ like they’re plot twists and putting the right things in the right place to get to a happy resolution. And redrafting (or ‘iterating’) once you’ve put your work under someone’s nose.

(It’s a shame then, that this industry doesn’t always see the parallels between good design and good communication.)

So where can you bring the two together?

I could list out everywhere a writer can help on a design project: consistent ways of talking across customer journeys; guidelines to bring your brand voice to life; clear ‘calls-to-action’. But it might start to read like a shopping list.

So instead, I thought I’d talk you through the good things that can happen when you combine design thinking and words.

#1. Your brand becomes stronger

As people, the words we choose say a lot about our personality. It’s equally true of brands.

We register a big difference between these two hypothetical chatbots:

Same content, two tones.

Why would a user choose one over another? Because the sentences create different expectations of either company and what they’re going to be like to interact with.

They paint a picture of polar opposite brands.

Branding used to belong to designers; it was the realm of logos and fonts and colour palettes. But as our understanding of what it means to be a good brand has widened, writing has become the start point — most branding projects kick off with wordsmithery in some form: what’s our purpose? What are our values? And so on.

On top of this, words are the way most people in an organisation engage with the banner they fly under. After all, we don’t all decide on logos or deal with eighteen-tier brand pyramids every day (thankfully).

But we all write emails. We all pick up the phone. For most of us, words are the way we ‘live’ the brand we’re part of — day in, day out. They belong to everyone.

And on the flipside of that, as customers, we’re now interacting with brands in an mind-boggling variety of ways: smart speakers, watch screens, semi-sentient microwaves. With so many words demanding our attention, brands need to think carefully about the ones they choose.

#2. You save time and money

A lot of big call centres are rewriting their scripts, starting from scratch: who is our audience? What do they need from this interaction? With this kind of thinking, they’re writing scripts that are simpler, shorter — scripts that shave seconds off their average call handling time.

That doesn’t sound like much, but when you multiply it across thousands of agents, thousands of calls and the space of, say, a year, you start to see how businesses can save millions by reworking the words they use.

That’s on a big scale, but think about your own productivity: wouldn’t your life be easier — and your work days shorter — if you were crystal clear on the ‘ask’ coming from every email? If all the systems you use made perfect sense? If you could breeze through financial reports — or better yet, actually enjoy reading them?

These things aren’t rocket science; not for writers, not for designers. They begin by thinking of what the audience needs and taking it from there.

#3. You improve your customer and user experience

When a customer first hears about you, are you more hey or hello? What about when they place an order? Or when they’re using your product? Or if they call up with questions?

If these things don’t add up — if they don’t tell a consistent story with a consistent voice — you’ll confuse your customers, sometimes in the space of seconds. A few misjudged words can quickly turn someone off. (And when you get it right, you can make the entire experience.)

#4. You build your company culture

Take Ben & Jerry’s. They describe why they exist in one line:

We make the best possible ice cream in the nicest possible way.

Well done Ben, well done Jerry.

Doesn’t that tell you more about them than all the companies who explain themselves with language like this?

We produce market-leading refreshment solutions with a holistic and responsible attitude to global wellbeing.

It’s why no transformation project could be complete without a look at how you’re communicating, internally as well as externally.

Because even the most obvious fixes to a piece of writing — like putting your main point first — could save you from a disastrous HR-shaped mess like this one.

So writing is anything but surface shine

If words are the last thing you come to when you’re designing, you need to rethink your process. Pasting in ‘lorem ipsum’ and hoping a writer can turn it into one clear narrative is about as helpful as asking a designer ‘can you make this pretty?’

NO! BAD!

We all need to design our writing with the same sense of depth as when we design products, services or organisations. Begin with the story you want to tell and how you want to tell it — and use that to guide all your decisions.

Meg Roberts

Written by

Creative director | www.schwa.consulting

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