Slides accompanying a presentation given in the Content Strategy Barcelona MeetUp, January 2014

1. Why Content Professionals and Designers
need to be best buddies, and how to help it
happen.
Clara Guasch Fortuny
Content Strategy Barcelona MeetUp
2014 01 23

2. Design and Content:
Can’t live without you

3. Content comes first (ideally).
Content needs to be created
independently from design (ideally).
As professionals, we can keep content
and design separate.

4. For the end user, there is no content
without design.
Content
CONTENT
content
Content
CONTENT
Content

5. Dear Design,
Life without you doesn’t
make sense. Thank you
very much for listening,
understanding and
handling me with care.
Yours,
Good Content

6. 1
Content and Design
1. What matters most? What’s less relevant?
http://www.parcdesalutmar.cat/hospitals/hospital-del-mar/

7. 1
Content and Design
1. What matters most? What’s less relevant?
http://www.aiguesdebarcelona.cat/ca/web/web-aguas-debarcelona/inicio

8. 1
Content and Design
2. Where’s everybody looking?
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

9. 1
Content and Design
2. Where’s everybody looking?
www.promentrada.com

10. 1
Content and Design
3. Short paragraphs with one idea per
paragraph work best
5 main ideas
www.cga.cat

11. 1
Content and Design
3. Short paragraphs with one idea per
paragraph work best
http://www.nancy-tunon.com/ca/escola_teatre/equip

12. 1
Content and Design
4. Width counts

13. 1
Content and Design
4. Width counts

14. 1
Content and Design
4. Width counts
If a text is too narrow, people get tired.
If a text is too wide, people get lazy.
 Let’s find a comfortable width for our text that can
help us read without getting a headache and without
having to move our heads to reach the end of the
line.

15. 1
Content and Design
5. Light text on dark background is ok for
headings, titles and labels only.
http://uxmovement.com/content/when-to-use-white-text-on-a-dark-background.

16. 1
Content and Design
6. Capital letters and underlined text are
difficult to read

THIS IS WAY MORE DIFFICULT TO
READ THAN THE THIRD LINE.
ESPECIALLY IF THE TEXT GETS
LONGER.

THIS IS MORE DIFFICULT TO READ
THAN THE THIRD LINE. ESPECIALLY
IF THE TEXT GETS LONGER.

This is easier to read than the previous
lines. Especially if the text gets longer.

17. 1
Content and Design
7. Floating lists are no good
A Content Strategy includes advice on:
 tone and style
 web structure and message hierarchy
 which content you need to create
and/or adapt
 how to take your users into account
 how to plan content creation
A Content Strategy includes advice on:
 tone and style
 web structure and message hierarchy
 which content you need to create
and/or adapt
 how to take your users into account
 how to plan content creation
 Help me read the introductory text of a list before I jump to
the first bullet.

18. 1
Content and Design
8. Links and only links should look like links.

19. 1
Content and Design
8. Links and only links should look like links.
 If a link doesn’t look like a link, I won’t get to the page you
want me to see.
 If something looks like a link but it isn’t, I get frustrated.
It’s nice to know when a link will kick me out of the page…

20. 1
Content and Design
9. Adds and only adds should look like adds

21. 1
Content and Design
9. Adds and only adds should look like adds

22. 1
Content and Design
10. Videos, graphs, photos and forms need text

23. 1
Content and Design
10. Videos, graphs, photos and forms need text
Vídeos
http://www.youtube.com/

24. 1
Content and Design
10. Videos, graphs, photos and forms need text
http://www.bracafe.com/pedidos/index.htm

25. Dear Content,
What would I do
without you? Thank
you very much for
being meaningful,
consistent and ready
when I come in.
Yours,
Good Design

26. Designers and Content professionals
Fancy a cup of coffee?

27. It’s not about you or me.
It’s about the user.

28. 2
Designers and Content Professionals
Before the project...
1.





Explore
What other projects have they done?
How do they generally tackle digital projects?
How used are they to working with real content?
What do they feel about lorem ipsum?
Have they any experience working together with content
professionals?
 What do they expect from you?

29. 2
Designers and Content Professionals
Before the project...
2. Explain and share
 Talk about how and why design is crucial for good content
to work.
 Explain how you usually tackle projects.
 Offer a list of crucial points to take into account when
designing for readable content.
 Make yourself available for any question or doubt.
 Talk positively about your previous experience with other
designers.
 Share everything you know about the project that can be
useful for the designer.

30. 2
Designers and Content Professionals
Before the project...
3. Foresee
 What problems and issues are likely to arise?
 Can you do anything to avoid or minimize them?
 How are you going to handle them?

31. 2
Designers and Content Professionals
Before the project...
4. Agree
 Decide together the best way to proceed, taking into
account each other’s background.
 More than likely, meeting more often at the beginning will
save a lot of time and problems in the long run.

32. 2
Designers and Content Professionals
During the project...
1. Show interest and offer help
 Show interest on the work that is being done.
 Offer to discuss things together.

33. 2
Designers and Content Professionals
During the project...
2. Appreciate
 Acknowledge what’s really good in the design as it is and
work on making it even better.
 Limit your critical comments on functional issues that affect
the messages (readability and usability).
Hint: ”and” is much better than “but”

34. 2
Designers and Content Professionals
During the project...
3. Listen carefully
 What can you learn from the designer’s view of the project?
 Are you maybe asking for impossibles?
 Be ready to partly give in, compromise.

35. 2
Designers and Content Professionals
During the project...
4. Justify your comments
 Don’t make comments based on your personal taste or
opinion.
 Make critical comments based on usability, readibility and
your knowledge about the project.
 Make it clear that you’re working to make it easier for the
user to find, read, understand and interact with the content.
 Don’t offer design solutions (unless you’re a designer
yourself!). Hint at the problem, explain it well and ask how it
could be solved.

36. 2
Designers and Content Professionals
At the end of the project...
1. Try to do some conscious learning
 Think and talk about what has worked out well and what
problems and issues have arisen and why.

37. 2
Designers and Content Professionals
At the end of the project...
2. Don’t forget to celebrate the good work done!

38. Whether content comes first, second
or last, it’s not complete until it has
shape and color.

39. Thank you

40. This document is subject to an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons
license. It allows you to download, distribute and publicly present the document as long as
you specify its title and author, and as long as it’s used non commercially.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en
(C) Clara Guasch Fortuny

41. www.aclareix.com
clara.guasch@aclareix.com