BuzZ February Recap :: Good Copy is Good Design

This post was written for the AIGA Charlotte's blog as a recap of the BuzZ session I led on February 2nd.

Most of us are aware of the contrived conflict between designers and non-designers, the latter including copywriters. Designers cite experiences with writers who don’t know what the word “edit” means or who simply want a designed template into which they can insert written content without regard for the dynamic between the design of the page and the words on it. 

Likewise, writers put designers into a few general categories: those who let the content inform their design process – more of these please; those who give graphic hierarchy to the copy but don’t otherwise base design decisions on its content; and then there’s that small lot of designers who consider words the bane of their design existence – not fun. 

However, though the training and deliverables assume different forms, copywriting parallels design work in practice. Copywriting is: Creative, Idea-intensive, Client-based, Deadline-driven, a Business, and a Communicative Art. The session’s title, “Good Copy is Good Design,” refers to this parallel and to the broader definition of design as intent, planning, or composition.

Team work, people.

With everyone in agreement that the best product comes from a collaborative process with valuable (and valued) input coming from both sides, it came down to a conversation about how designers and copywriters could better work together. A few suggestions and tools of the trade were discussed.

1. The Copy/Design Brief: Whether separate briefs are involved or the same one is used by both parties, the brief is a proven way of being sure everyone is on the same page in terms of understanding the client and their needs, audience, and core message.

2. Word Bank or Brand Dictionary: While design standards may exist for companies and institutions, this is less often the case for language. I often assemble a list of words and phrases that help me, and the designer in turn, understand the feeling and tone of voice that the final product needs to project.

For example, Google calls their employees Googlers, new employees Nooglers, Zurich employees Zooglers and so on. That in-house language gives off a particular, fun vibe that informs both company copy and design. Compare that to Disney where employees are Cast Members, and visitors are Guests. The behind-the-scenes, event-oriented feeling of that language inspires very different but equally successful, brand-specific copy and design work.

3. Character Counts: I’m not talking about middle school ethics class. The question is how many words must be on the page? This is the most common point of contention between designers and writers in my experience. The solution is simple: decide the count as soon as humanly possible.

But there’s so much to say!

One attendee asked how to present vast amounts of information without building a wall of text. A couple of options were mentioned:  bullet points (which summoned a collective ugh) and infographics. When bullets are your only option, they shouldn’t be given greater design weight than the narrative that the text in paragraph form delivers. The designer and writer must work together to create a visual hierarchy that prevents the “Power Point brain” that bullets induce. Similarly, it’s the go-to graphs created by amateurs in Office programs that make us cringe, not the fantastic graphics by information designers that are rich with data and communicate quickly and effectively to the reader.

Show some respect.

The session ended on acts of professional courtesy. Designers requested an awareness of deadlines and warned against adding multiple paragraphs of text the day of or before said deadline. Writers suggested that, while they understand designs change with development, if you say 500-800 words, don’t  ask the final version to be 400, especially when 650 words of content have been approved by the client after 12 painstaking rounds of review.  (We knew word count would resurface. See #3 above).

Not surprisingly, both designers and copywriters expressed the desire  to work in tandem. Designers prefer to design for content rather than out of thin air, and writers often find inspiration for their work in conversations about a project’s design direction. There you have it – a happy ending.

Written by Jessica Thomas, owner and editor at Speak Your Design, a writing service for arts and design based people and projects.

Word of the Week: Halcyon

Sand Hill Crane by James John Audubon

"A halcyon is a mythical bird—often identified as a kingfisher—said to breed in a floating nest at sea during the winter solstice, during which time it charms the wind and waves into calm." 

So goes the first sentence from the Wiki entry “halcyon.”

Nothing inspires me to write like my love of language and the interconnected world that language shows us…so I jump back into this blog with a short recap of why the word halcyon is my word of the week. It begins with the new restaurant at the Mint Museum of Art’s new uptown location - Halcyon, Flavors of the Earth. For one, I love that the restaurant’s name could be the (perhaps overly romantic) title of an art history paper. Secondly, I’ve been excited to dine here based on their menu’s focus on locally sourced ingredients and the rumor of presentation that befits their location in Charlotte’s leading museum.

In brief, the restaurant and meal was amazing. The interior conveys a welcoming feel - an accomplishment considering the scale and materials of the museum’s architecture. Tables made from an oak tree felled by a storm along Queens Road last year lend warmth and history and a bit of restrained magic to the space.

Continue to that afternoon, post-lunch, reading a review of Asian hotels, mostly in China (of course- where else is any building occurring right now?). The article referred to a hotel along Shanghai’s Bund standing as a “21st-century landmark that would also reflect the Bund's halcyon days.” What? I thought halcyon referred to tranquility and calm? So I went to my dictionary; halcyon also refers to a previous era or yesteryear.

As any good contemporary citizen would, I then searched wiki and found: “a mythical bird…said to breed in a floating nest at sea during the winter solstice, during which time it charms the wind and waves into calm (1).”
The image called to mind by that description – I wish Audubon had watercolored that though Turner may be a better fit. That height of naturalist paintings in the 19th century where fantasy met reality brings me back to a lunch where a beautiful dish spoke to the exquisite flavors that the earth provides and the art inspired by it.


1. The name of the halcyon bird is based on the Greek myth of Alcyone, who, as is the case in most ancient myths, attempted suicide because her love was killed by the gods. Of course, as she throws herself into the ocean, the gods regain their compassion (typical) and change her and her restored lover into halcyon birds.