What bugs me about “content out”
20 November 11
Recently there’s been much talk of “content out”, the idea that web design should be inspired by the qualities of the text and images of a site. It’s a healthy idea, but like any slogan, it is open to misinterpretation.
The web design industry has only recently afforded content its rightful status. We were wrong to relegate content to the role of a commodity – something we could pour into beautifully-crafted templates. In our rush to rectify this balance, we mustn’t overcorrect and deprecate the role of truly creative design.
From an algorithmic perspective, the idea that style and substance are separate is appealing. It allows us to code markup and stylesheets independently, and fits the logical mindset shared by so many techies. But it’s a falsehood. Style and substance are irretrievably linked. Like space and time, they are neither separable nor the same thing – there exists no hierarchy between them, no primacy. One informs the other. The other informs the one.
It’s impossible to perceive content and presentation separately. The two combine to create something more valuable: meaning.
The same content, with very different meanings.
Some of the best-known examples of the content out design principle are blogs from today’s leading digital lights. These sites feature expert typography, harmony and balance. They are undoubtedly beautiful. They also look terribly similar. Book design is the dominant aesthetic, meaning that the content does indeed shine. However, individuality surfaces only in esoteric flourishes. The people who have made these sites are diverse and bold, but these qualities often struggle to surface.
It’s a mistake to let content drive design, just as it was to let design drive content. We mustn’t let the pendulum swing too far. If we are to go beyond mere information and style to create meaning, the two must be partners, feeding from and influencing each other.
Until we see more diversity in the sites that espouse a content out approach, I worry the movement could be too simply characterised as one of minimalism – or worse, faddishness and elitism:
The idea that content can act as the interface is noble. But sometimes you need interface. The interactivity and responsiveness of the digital medium means it excels at interface. Text can often suffice, but it possesses limited affordances. It conveys information and gives instructions well, but it’s poor at conferring mental models, creating subconscious emotions, establishing genre, and suggesting interaction capabilities: things crucial for brand-driven sites or functional applications.
Overly-literal interpretation of content out could create a web of homogeneity. A web that conveys little that a book could not, save for hyperlinks and videos. A web that fails to take full advantage of the digital medium. For all our talk of breaking free of the print design mentality, content out risks reducing the capabilities of the digital medium, in favour of fetishising the craft of print design. That would truly undermine the intent of the approach.
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16 comments on What bugs me about “content out”
I think the key is to “design” first and add “graphics” later. The way I approach is to design layout, text sizes and element positioning before thinking about eye-candy. Once the layout is in place, I get our graphic designers to add colour, texture and graphics. Here’s a screenshot of a report I just did on the process: http://yfrog.com/nygfm5j
@_gareth I believe that your method is inherently wrong, and to me it feels like the antithesis of Cennydd’s point. It all feels terribly arbitrary. You are setting the majority of the design work in stone before you have decided on the meaning, or tone, of the end result.
In fact, the intended meaning should inform not just the structure of the design, but the structure of the content, the copy writing, the interactivity, etc.. If this sounds terribly holistic and somewhat unrealistic, it’s because it is. It may not always be possible to have a hand every aspect, but for a good web designer it should be the goal.
Your method feels more like the result of poor planning. It’s not a solution, but a kludge.
The message *is* the experience.
@paddyduke it’s not arbitrary at all. We generally know the branding (logo, general style, etc) before hand, so we’ve got an idea of what we’re working with.
A *lot* of thought is put in to where things are positioned and what they say, which I think is key to good conversion. Its like wire-framing but without the waste.
The content is written so that it draws the reader through the site, with the images/videos/etc emphasising some of the points. The headings tell a story by themselves, so people who scan should still get a good idea of the message.
I don’t think it’s poor planning either. We insist on getting the majority of the content first along with the objectives of the site. I think knowing how the content is displayed on the page far more important than the particular typeface or colour palette.
YMMV though!
Great article eloquently put. It is clear to me content is and always will be king. Unfortunately in many real life situations generic dummy content must be used and the challenge of creating robust “content out” designs which are unique or original becomes much more difficult.
Client education is often key to achieving an ‘even’ coherent mix, so that the design & content balance.
This is where the biggest problem with developing websites rears it’s ugly head.
It’s very easy to blow clients away with design. When doing a pitch, it’s more often than not, the pretty pictures which ultimately get you the contract. Obviously a clear and consistent strategy will get you a lot of the way there, but a design can sway the deal.
Then you get to build and very often, the client has no clue about content and how to implement it. The bulk of the budget has gone into design and build and the client has assured you content will be produced by themselves. There’s no room for copywriters in the budget. Oops.
I’ve seen it time and time again. The design gets produced with dummy text, the build is done and suddenly the project stalls.
When the client finally gets around to content, it doesn’t fit. There’s either too much, too little, poorly written and there’s no imagery to fit the carefully crafted layouts.
What is clear to me is that an agency has to pay as much attention to hand-holding the client on content as they do on design.
If the budget has no wiggle room, then ditch some of the expensive design features. Do we really need that eye-candy rich ‘featured area’ on the home page? Is it really that essential to have a complex tabbed/accordion interface to display news items or products?
Client education … that’s more often than not where the missing link between design and content lies.
Matt’s comment is spot on. I agree that content and design must work hand in hand, and that the two are inseparable.
That said, it is important to note that before you can design anything, you need to know what it is you want to say with that design, and what the business objectives of that content are.
You might not need for every word to be written before designing (usually not), but if you don’t have the first idea about what the devil you are saying, you will most likely fail.
When we talk of “content strategy,” that’s what we mean – having a coherent strategy for our communication, that includes the words, but also the images and the architecture.
I’ve been speaking about what “content first” means quite a lot lately, and will be talking about it at An Event Apart several times this year.
I argue that having clean, well-structured content is what will enable designers to have the flexibility they need to make appropriate design decisions. Particularly when we look at how our content will appear across web and various mobile platforms, we need a base of reusable content objects to work from. If we have that, then we give designers the power and the tools they need to make the right design decisions for the medium and the meaning.
I don’t think anyone is saying that content must drive design any more than design must drive content. Rather, we’re trying to evolve new processes that ensure that everyone on a team starts with an understanding of how the content works.
I think there’s a bit of misunderstanding going on. When I hear ‘content out’ I think of what Jeremy Keith points out in his latest blog post, http://adactio.com/journal/5028/. Which is to say, styling the most minute pieces of content, that will not be broken apart into different modules regardless of the device, and then moving on to layout work. Nowhere in there does it say anything about separating design and content. In fact, I think responsive sites that use Mark Boulton’s idea of content out have been fairly well-branded. Such as, the Clearleft Agency’s website, the Boston Globe, or the dConstruct website all speak very well of the particular brands they represent. The examples you may be thinking of might simply be manifestations of the typophilia of the particular designers…
Great article eloquently put. It is clear to me content is and always will be king. Unfortunately in many real life situations generic dummy content must be used and the challenge of creating robust “content out” designs which are unique or original becomes much more difficult.
As a content strategist, I was initially *ecstatic* to see big-name web folks tout things like “content first” and “content out.” Yes! Content! High-fives all around! But I also noticed the problem of folks latching onto the terminology without the underlying philosophy. I heard people say “content first” to mean that all copy had to be finalized before design could begin. Literal, indeed.
However, I would argue that despite an uptick in content chatter, we’re nowhere near the pendulum shifting directions. Content is still undiscussed in a huge number of web projects, particularly for those mid-sized organizations whose fingers aren’t on the pulse of the web profession.
I think Karen is absolutely correct in her argument that reusable structured content is going to be critical to giving designers the flexibility to design for shifting devices and platforms. One important element to highlight here is that simply splitting content from presentation won’t accomplish this. We must first carefully consider both what our content means and *how* it means it—what elements exist within the content that lend it that substance—if we want to build structures that will support the content’s purpose.
This, so far, has been the limitation of structured content: created by those in technical roles, it often has failed to be structured in ways that support the complexity of its meaning, resulting in content that’s reusable but mechanical and dead.
As you say, “style and substance are irretrievably linked.” But since we cannot hand-design each piece of content for each place it must be displayed, that substance must become inherent in our content’s structure. In a web that’s unfixed, where we cannot control every pixel, this is the only way designers can hope to create presentation layers that support content’s meaning. And this will require content people—folks who do message and meaning and purpose for a living—to start informing structure decisions.
I think Matt and Ray are on it with the reference to client education and communication being key – this is essentially what a content strategy entails to my mind. Practitioners already have many tools for giving content meaning from a technical point of view, generally referred to as semantic markup (although there is room for refinement). The challenge is translating this content for effective consumption across various media in an accessible and engaging way.
I take your point. As the movement of ‘content is king’ rises, we’re seeing a swing in the exact opposite direction of design driven web development – content driven web development! Fine in principle but, in reality, designing around terrible content mindlessly is going to have just as negative effect as ignoring it all together.
Personally I believe the best sites are the ones where content and design are creating in harmony, equally balanced, to deliver a strong, powerful and appropriate message. One should never lead the other as they both important parts of the same solution.
A few years ago a friend of mine told me his graphic designer son partnered with a copywriter. I thought this was odd at the time and kind of pointless until I learnt it was fairly common in print / advertising. Thinking about it, it totally makes sense and your phrase “One informs the other. The other informs the one.” is spot on.
I’ve always advocated content first because a designer needs to understand the message before interpreting it in design. Really what I want to happen is as above; the designer works WITH the content strategist / copywriter on the message and how it will be presented. So maybe we should encourage more copywriter/designer partnerships on the web too? Or as designers, we should learn more about content strategy and learn how to appreciate this relationship more.
Project dynamics can make things tricky especially with client work. But if I get content first that I think doesn’t make sense and I can’t design effectively with it, I don’t hesitate to go back and work through with the relevant people until it’s right. It’s totally the designers responsibility but I think that should be the designers philosophy not just for content – designers need enough knowledge to understand when something could compromise the design, then challenge and work it out accordingly.
Great article. An additional angle to consider is the proliferation of services that reformat distributed content: instapaper, readability, flipboard, etc.
So we’ve got to ensure the content and design balance – but also that the former works on its own.
It’s simple in my eyes – UX, design and copy all needs to be done and considered at the same time; all affect each other; all have the same goal. I’m so glad things are moving on because the ‘design first, content later’ approach just falls down on so many levels.
I agree with the basic premise. But I don’t see signs that “design drives content” is abating. I am asked all the time to shorten or eliminate content to balance the design.
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