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Jessica Thomas
Owner, Speak Your Design

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.

2010: A Good Year?

It’s the third Thursday in November, which means the release of this year’s Beaujolais Nouveau vintage. To pay tribute to this world wide celebration of the vine, I’ve pulled out a few of my favorite examples of wine-related architecture.

Herzog and de Meuron’s Dominus winery is probably the best known winery in architectural circles for its context-driven design. The building envelope garnered much of the fame, constructed as a gabion system – wire cages filled with large rocks – that screens the light without blocking the free flow of temperate Napa Valley air.

Dominus Winery by Herzog and de Meuron, Napa Valley, 1998. 

hen there’s the barrel cellar, my favorite part of the winery, where the mass and density of the surrounding earth stabilizes air temperature and humidity while minimizing vibrations – ideal conditions for wine storage. I’ll limit myself to three examples here: the 18th century cellars of Loimer winery in Austria, the sweeping arcs of the concrete cellars at Bodegas Otazu in Spain, and Stephen Holl’s restoration of the labyrinthine wine cellars dating back to 1100 AD for the Loisum Visitors’ Centre in Austria. I know this last one is mostly for looks, but what can I say? I have a thing for old world tunnels.

Loimer's 18th century cellars, restored by Andreas Burghardt Architect, Austria, 2002.

Bodegas Otazu's barrel cellars by Jaime Gaztelu Quijano Architect, Spain, 1997.

Loisium Visitors' Centre by Steven Holl Architects, Austria, 2003.

 On to the drinking part of this tour! Tasting rooms have become architectural jewels in and of themselves, but I appreciate the subdued simplicity of Peregrine’s tasting bar in New Zealand by Architectural Workshop. 

Peregrine Tasting Bar by Architecture Workshop, New Zealand, 2003.

Let’s end on a ridiculous, obviously pre-Recession example: the Radisson BLU Hotel’s Wine Tower in the London Stansted Airport. Within a 13-meter high, temperature controlled cube where bottles are illuminated by NASA-engineered lighting systems, trained acrobat servers called “wine angels” move wine safely from tower to table via a computerized pulley system. Ticket change to Vegas, anyone?

Wine Tower by Elimun8 & Speirs and Major Associates, London, 2004.

Amateur Night

“The sudden bisociation of an idea or event with two habitually incompatible matrices will produce a comic effect, provided that the narrative, the semantic pipeline, carries the right kind of emotional tension. When the pipe is punctured, and our expectations are fooled, the now redundant tension gushes out in laughter, or is spilled in the gentler form of the sou-rire.” – Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation*

Okay, so this isn’t the only thing that came to mind when I watched an amateur comedy show recently – editing got involved, too.

The show was what you might expect: mediocre comedy with a highlight here and there, mostly jokes on adult themes, body parts and fluids, etc. But comedy, both good and bad, interests me because of its creativity.

Comedy has been a point of reference for those interested in the creative act, especially those who approach art and culture through the lens of psychoanalysis, since the 19th century. Creatively speaking, comedy is the merging of two “habitually incompatible” lines of thought that end up in that non-violent release of tension, aka laughing.

To do this well, to get people rolling in the aisles, the incompatibilities must be “implied in the text.” If you make it explicit (i.e. over-explain the structure upon which the joke is built), you “destroy the story’s comic effect.”** We all know that person who makes the funniest joke not funny by reversing the order of the joke’s elements or explaining the joke’s premise in too great detail. They’ve punctured Koestler’s pipe in too many places. The tension is diffused before that pivotal moment of release – it’s all drip, drip, instead of the desired gush.

For writers, this comes down to the fact that a good joke must be well edited. You can’t give too much away too early, and the punch line can’t be blurted out without the build. Sure, a good comedian must have stage presence and good delivery, too, but even the latter is built on giving the audience time to develop that inner tension based on the smallest number of words up front. Marketing copywriters work with this principle daily – when your audience isn’t expecting what’s coming, the cathartic effect makes them want to pay attention to what you have to say next. And that’s good business.

*p. 51, Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation, The Macmillan Company: New York, 1964.
**p. 36, Koestler.

Hometown Hero

NCDT's David-Ingram (Costume by Erika Diamond. Photo by Jeff Cravotta)

This weekend’s North Carolina Dance Theatre performance was still on my mind this morning so indulge  me for one more post. I took another look at the program, searching for the name of the choreographer and lighting designer on my favorite piece of the night called Arson. That’s when it hit me – Choreographer: David Ingram. I knew it sounded familiar. Ingram hails from East Tennessee, more specifically, Kingsport, Tennessee, which happens to be where yours truly was born and raised. In fact, I think David was Fritz the year I played Clara. Let's just say he's grown up quite a bit since I saw him last, and I approve.
Enough of that, let’s talk about Arson. I’ll admit, the design did it for me: costumes by Lindsey Bruck, set and lighting design by John P. Woodey. The backdrop to the stage was removed, exposing the architecture of the Knight Theater backstage that normally lives hidden from the audience’s view. A single sheet of white fabric draped the back wall from the flyspace to the stage floor.
The great height and added depth were magnified by the performers occupying the stage space and the lighting design, which included several utilitarian metal light cages like those you’d find on a construction site hanging in rows downstage. These pendant lights would increase and decrease in intensity throughout the number, the light shifting from a bright white to a warm yellow, while dancers alternated swinging specific pendants front and back as they moved between and around them.
The effect was such that the entire space of the theater was altered, the scale reconfigured, color drained to sepia tones.  Music by Hangedup, Ben Frost, Rachel Grimes and Piano Magic alternated strings and distortion over heavy bass tones that made the entire theater seem to expand and retract in rhythm like a diaphragm. I was mesmerized.
So here’s to David Ingram, the hometown hero who made his professional choreographic debut at this year’s Innovative Works series, and to the designers, musicians, and performers who made it more than choreography.

Picking up the Slack

NCDT's Kara Wilkes in costume designed by Erika Diamond. Photo by Jeff Cravotta

Thanks to a thoughtful friend, I had the pleasure of attending North Carolina Dance Theatre’s “Innovative Works” performance last Saturday night, which as you might have guessed, featured a series of original pieces by emerging and established choreographers created specifically for the NCDT dancers. While this outpouring of new ideas and energy can sometimes go amiss here and there, Saturday’s performance was one stellar performance after another.
That said, if I had to choose a weak link, it would have to be the opening number, which mixed language and movement in a way that frankly didn’t work. I enjoyed the movement, how can you not enjoy watching these performers own the stage, but the premise – a beatnik-inspired setting complete with bongo drums and moments of spoken word between which the dancers would perform a movement series – seemed oddly dated, considering the “eco” theme that drove the evening’s program. More than that, the words didn’t connect with the movement.
That got me thinking. The arts have such power because they defy words. Art replaces words with movement, sound, images, color. Architecture, too, does a bit of this, offering spatial experience as explanation of what architects do. How do you add words with it becoming forced? Didactic?
Art and architecture should never have to pick up where words leave off or vice versa. It the dialog between the two that gives texture and depth to the experience.
The first number on Saturday night required the dancers to pick up the slack, and, believe me, they did beautifully. While it didn’t detract from my evening, that uneven exchange clarified to me why I care about what I do as a writer and editor in design and the arts. Maybe NCDT will get one of my kind involved next time.