Poetry, content design, and the profoundness of small moments
Don’t just turn to industry conversations for inspiration.
“so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.”
William Carlos Williams (what a name, by the way) published this poem, “The Red Wheelbarrow” in 1923, and the world of literature still can’t shut up about it.
My high school English teacher first exposed me to this poem to kick off our poetry unit in the 12th grade. Why this poem in particular? One, because in college her professor gave her a C on an analysis about it, which permanently scarred her. But more importantly, because Very Smart People believe it epitomizes poetry as a tool for profound brevity and simplicity.
With eight lines and 16 words (15 if you count wheelbarrow as one word in this context), Williams takes up little space on paper. This echoes the scene he paints, symbolizing humble laborers who take up little space on the world stage. He uses poetry to legitimize them.
What content designers can learn from poetry
A poem written about about a wheelbarrow almost a century ago somehow helps me better understand my job at an enterprise technology company as a content designer — a discipline that is in its beginning stages of defining itself.
Every word in the poem feels intentional, and that level of detail inspires me to work creatively within small confines. Williams gave himself one or three words per line. That’s about the same word limit for copy on buttons within my team’s product.
Poetry validates my impulse to think critically about “small” decisions like that. When you can only use so many words to instruct, guide, or inform people without detracting from the experience of using a product, they better be the right words. Further, people who use your product can grow frustrated and lose trust if you don’t carefully craft every small moment.
Much like content designers, poets prioritize crafting how they present words as much as the words themselves. The structures and shapes of stanzas add meaning to the prose. These two elements are created in tandem — not silos. For example, did you notice the poem above resembles the shape of a wheelbarrow? Don’t worry, I totally googled it.
What content designers shouldn’t take from poetry
Poetry can be annoyingly esoteric. That’s fine. Poets don’t need to serve you. Content designers, however, do.
Poets can leverage ambiguity to broaden meaning, or use it as a glossy finish to safeguard the personal experiences that led them to craft their poems in their first place. Content design, in contrast, requires clarity and an emphasis on service, rather than display.
This “non-lesson” also helps me better understand where my discipline fits into the cultural comparisons between design and art. People often compare and contrast visual designers and artists. A viz holds themselves accountable to their users. An artist defines why they create, and for whom. Reflecting on how poetry interacts with art helps me conceptualize how content design interacts with visual design.
Take a walk on the wild side (at work)
Should we relate all of our personal, creative exploration back to work? Of course not. That sounds hellish. But you can easily fall into the pattern of exclusively drawing from your work world’s buzzwords, processes, and norms, only to forget about the potential that exists outside of those confines from 9 to 5.
I, personally, produce my best work when I draw from influences that exist in spaces that don’t care if you break the rules.
Amanda Booth (@wordswithamanda) is a Content Designer at IBM. She’s based in Austin, Texas. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
