I spent quite a few hours obsessively cranking out a document for SocEnt the other day. The document was pretty simple. It was just a sheet that included several expectations that students needed to meet in order to do well on their final presentations. Nothing fancy. No crazy infographic or magical moving pictures or anything like that. Essentially, I was making a descriptive list.

“So why’d it take you so long?” That was my quad mate’s question for me. He wanted to know why I was spending so much time making a simple list look nice. The reason it took me so long was because I believe design matters. The content on the list took about thirty minutes to write. The other five hours came from organizing the content in a logical manner, organizing the content in a different logical manner, organizing the content in yet another (superior) logical manner, and going crazy over being three pixels off with the positioning of objects.

Makes Information Accessible

I wouldn’t invest the time if I didn’t have a good reason. So why is design so important? For one, it makes information much more accessible to an audience. Look at this page… can you even make out half of the information on the page? I don’t have any desire to read a word on that monstrosity. Now look at this page… much better. The point of the page is made clear and the content is digestible. Framing your content is just as important as the content itself. This is an extreme example but the point is that good design helps your audience get more out of your content.

Adds Legitimacy

No one in their right mind would seriously consider whatever was written on that messed up political page. On the other hand, a nice looking page can add legitimacy, regardless of the content included (up to a certain point, of course). For this reason, everything an organization creates should be designed well. That political page could have amazing content, but no one cares about it! Convincing an audience that you mean business can give an organization a huge boost. If you want to be taken seriously, you have to ensure that whatever you create can be taken seriously. A logical design can be a giant leap in the right direction if you want this for your organization.

So I could have saved time and made a simple list… but that wouldn’t reflect the LEAD program as well as the organized document I ended up making. Is the sheet I made legendary and beautiful? Hell no, but it frames the content in a digestible way and gets the message across clearly. That’s exactly what good design should do.