My Secret Writing Formula #2: Design-Fit Model of Content Writing

When you write a blog article, things are simple. It is a text-rich format of content that might have some design elements but they do not interfere but only augment content by adding value through beautification or illustration. But what if your goal is to produce a content format that is dominated by visual design? Things could be challenging…

Imagine, you want to create a landing page and you first write textual content containing details of your product, features, benefits, call to action, process, etc. The next would be for the designers to search for a design that would fit this content. This obviously takes time. Finding the perfect design is nearly impossible here but a designer would find a design that would fit most needs and would then spend time customizing it to fit the content. This is a typical process that is followed by the content industry.

1.     Write content

2.     Find the design

3.     Customize the design to fit content

4.     Identify gaps where content is not a perfect fit for the design

5.     Ask the writer to edit the content taking extra space to fit the design

Now, imagine, if we reversed this process and worked like this –

1.     Find a perfect design

2.     Ask the writer to produce text based on the design

There would not be any edits required from the writer nor would the designer need to spend time finding the right design, customizing it, or filling the gaps. A high-creative and responsive design can simply be chosen and the writer can produce the content as per the format.

This is what I call ‘A Design-Fit Model of Content Writing’!

It simply means that you have to write the content considering the constraints of a given design. However, a caveat: The content should not be force fit. Because then it will look like a square peg in a round hole. The fitness has to be seamless. Your page visitor should feel that the design and text are complementing each other and are a perfect fit.

Now, that is a big challenge in itself!

How do we fit the content into the design?

Imagine you had a fight with an office colleague, a client, or a classmate. You are really frustrated and feel like telling how unfair the other person was to you. With this mindset, when you meet a friend, what will you do? Perhaps narrate the whole story for an hour and do a lot of complaining?

Now, if the person you meet is not your friend but a person who newly joined your company but is curious to learn what happened to you. What will you do then? In a few sentences, you will narrate the same story and keep the unnecessary bits like ranting to yourself.

In both cases, the listener will know what happened. Your friend will be aware of what happened and the same would be true for your new colleague. Your mind has done the adjustments and made the selections and deselections of the pieces of information before you delivered your story.

This flexibility of mind is what you need when writing to fit a design. One single message can be communicated to different people in different ways and at different lengths. The same goes for writing. You can write one sentence to share a message or you can expand it into a thousand words and still communicate the same idea. But when you are writing text to fit a design, can you really do that? Can you ensure that your core message, style, and emotion are not lost in the way?

I began with the example of a landing page. Now, imagine if it was not a landing page but a newsletter, a brochure, or a video. The problem statement would still remain the same. Fitting text to design will ease the life of a designer and would also make things really fast but how can we ensure that the message is not lost when tweaking content?

How can we make sure that no matter the length of our content, our message is always complete? Let me give you an example:

Text for design 1 (Long Para): Human muscles can only be pulled, not pushed. This is why only one side of the muscle is acting between two jointed bones. Imagine if both sides of the muscles worked separately and did the pulling and pushing! How difficult would it become to go back to a balanced state? The same goes for conversations between two humans. When one is pulling and the other person is pulled, the movement is smooth but if both pull or push, the result is a conflict, a fight.

Text for design 2 (Short para): Our muscles only pull, not push and one at a time to ensure that our body parts are in sync. In the same way, when two people are talking, one person must give the direction and the other must follow. Only then, the conversation is smooth. Going against the direction would create conflict.

Text for design 3 (Micro content):

What is conflict?

Imagine your calf and thigh muscles…

Pulling each other in different directions??!

(Perhaps show it in the form of an image)

Conversations Create Connections!

Arguments Produce Combats!

The message remains the same. All these text options are giving the same story by explaining conflict using the metaphor of human muscles.

When rewriting your content to fit a different design, remember that you do not need to retain words but only the message and emotions it should generate. So, first, take note of the core messages, identify the tone to follow, and the emotion to generate. And then, begin experimenting with your thoughts – turn them, twist them, modify them, change them – just keep the essential elements intact. You can use one word for a whole sentence, a different sentence to communicate the same idea, or a different approach to communicate the same message but as long your message and emotion remain intact, your content is good to go.