What should come first, copy or web design?
What a lovely cake
What a lovely cake
What should come first, copy or web design?
What a lovely cake
“Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration” – Jeffrey Zeldman, web designer (www.zeldman.com)
Although the aesthetics of a website are important, neglecting the written content will make the finished product suffer as much or more than poor design. The fact is that when it comes to creating a website, the design and the copywriting are two sides of the same coin: one cannot exist without the other.
Generally businesses who want a new website contact the web designer, the designer then comes up with the website, and the copywriting comes last (or in some cases not at all). In many cases, the words are not seen as important.
When you think of how other advertising methods are developed, you might think that website design should really begin with the words. Would you shoot a TV advertisement without a script, or design a newspaper advertisement without first knowing what the message was? Although a good design will get you noticed, the right words will get your message across.
Whatever your opinion is, no matter how you bake the cake the website user won’t be looking at the individual ingredients, they’ll be looking at the whole cookie.
For the perfect website try this recipe.
Take three main ingredients, a communications plan, a copywriter and web designer. Then follow the original menu (client brief) and put the three ingredients together in a large bowl (office), add a dash of creativity, a table spoon of technical ability, a pinch of plain English, a generous amount of planning and stir well. Pop them into the oven (workstation) for a couple of days. Check every now and then to ensure the cake (website) is rising properly and when the time is up place it on a server and deliver to your customers.
Plan, write, design and deliver. A recipe for a perfect website…what do you think?
Richard Hamer Says:
Web design and copy can work on their own as long as pagination is agreed. What I’ve found with certain web companies is that they design a site then ask the client for the copy, which is news to the client, so they cobble badly written text together which the web do then dump in the site.
And as an example, I arranged the copy and pagination for an ex-client’s website (they didn’t use my designers) and the web co rewrote my text in a really appalling way. Ex client now has a really bad site with ecommerce that doesn’t work.
January 13th, 2011 at 8:54 amjudithdavid Says:
Hi Richard
February 17th, 2011 at 3:22 pmThanks very much for your comment on the blog, ‘What should come first, copy or web design?” It is always difficult for the client when they are suddenly asked to populate a website as they then often find that the website does not fit their requirements. I try, when possible, to work with web designers from the outset of a client brief so that between us we can provide a website that meets the client needs. Agree that web design and copy can work on their own as long as pagination is agreed.