So you’ve got a tremendous product or service, and a hero image that perfectly summarizes everything that you are trying to communicate to potential customers. You’ve even got a beautiful logo that you can’t wait to plaster over your marketing materials. All of the stars are perfectly aligned, and you’re chomping at the bit to see a layout that will ensure total success.
All of that is well and good, until the moment arrives when you realize there is no actual message behind the design. This is a scenario that can cost a lot of time and money during the development process of any marketing strategy.
And there’s always the temptation to simply plow ahead with a series of mockups that ultimately do nothing but showcase a designers ability to build a composition and layout. It won’t matter a whole lot that the choice of fonts and formatting is spot-on, because there is a problem that encapsulates the entire effort:
There is no copy, or what little copy exists is kind of horrible. The headline doesn’t really communicate anything important. The call-to-action is buried somewhere in the dry, uninspired description of the product or service. As artists and designers, we create in a click-bait, instant gratification kind of world. In a nutshell, it only takes a second to move on to the next shiny object. Despite what you may have heard, people do actually still read, though, if the message is clear.
There are a bunch of euphemisms that could describe this aspect in the creative process, but the first one that comes to mind is, ‘Don’t put the carriage before the horse’. Still, that’s a pretty outdated saying, I suppose. I’d rather go with something a little more real world than that, something that we should always remember when planning any kind of design: Copy is King.
SR