Content is King. Most people who work in web design have heard this before. Content is the first layer that sets the foundation for an entire web project. Without good content that is well thought out and appropriate, it will fail.

How content ties in with a web designers job

Most web designers are not writers. However, when thinking of content in the context of web design, one can’t help not to think about the hierarchy of information. Markup languages used to create the ground work for a web project rely on semantically correct tags and properly divided blocks of information. Thus, a web designer does not see content the same way that a writer or editor sees it. This is generally where niche web professionals like Content Strategists, Information Architects and SEO’s come in. These skilled professionals are well versed in many areas of the web but focus mostly on content while working with designers and developers. However, what if you are a freelance web designer who maybe works with smaller businesses and clients as a “one point of contact” ?. Maybe you wear all these hats to a certain extent?

In the DVD “Designing with CSS”, Andy Clarke gives a great behind the scene look at how a web designer working one on one with clients can produce content. He starts in a word document and looks at all the content. He then continues to add comments to blocks of content where he identifies each as different html tags. Perhaps attention to SEO and Social Media is also focused on during this time. This process allows for focus to be placed on just the content and solves a lot of problems before it is put into an HTML document and production. Seeing Andy’s process was a huge eye opener.

Recently, Jeffery Zeldman lead a discussion where he explained that “Web Design is Publishing”. Brilliantly stated, it hints to the importance of building content rich site with web standards.

What do you do to produce content? If you are a designer or developer wearing many hats, is there a particular process you go through with your clients?

Please feel free to share your experiences below!

Thanks for reading and keep a look out for a new Trial and Error next week!