Content is King!
We’ve all seen and done it – produced a design content mock up for a client. Populated it with dummy text and images. Client loves it, sends over their pictures and content. Sadly that’s often where things go wrong.
Design vs Content – Content vs Design
You’ve no doubt experienced it. You either have too much or too little content. The pictures don’t resize correctly. A favourite pet hate of ours, you get sent a tiny thumbnail. It has to be scaled up so much it ends up being a big blur on the page.
It’s a real chicken and egg situation. Content is not essential at design stages – but it does help. But how will it look with ‘this much’ content? It’s often difficult to get clients to understand the impact content will have on design. They often don’t know what content to provide. They have to actually see something to know what to put where. Of course we always make things work. It’s often a long and winding path to get to the signing off phase.
So what do you think?
Is content vital at the start of a design project? Is it as easy to integrate after a design and layout has been established? It’s often heart breaking. To have to resize and reshuffle a layout you’ve designed and are happy with. Most of the time what the client sends in the way of content is what it is and is fundamental to their message. Only if you’re really, REALLY lucky can you convince them that less is more or more is less. Depending on the complexity of the design.
Design Content
Dummy text and stock images can often be a designers undoing. Being able to manipulate amount of text without a worry. Putting in associated, professionally produced photos / pieces of artwork which look the business. Then the actual image supplied is, well, not as good and severely impacts the design. But this is where a designer’s flair and creativity comes into play. It’s our job to make it look visually appealing, right? So, design vs content or content vs design? Equally as important, the design can only look as good as the content within it. The content has to look good in the design. I’m sitting on the fence for this one. One thing we can say is that whatever you are after, business cards, flyers, posters or brochures – we’ll create exactly what you want.
