Content centric design

Web, 20 August 2007, 3 minute read

Lorem ipsum dolor amet…raise your hands if you can dream that line as well. Lorem ipsum has to be the most looked-at text for over 500 years now. Used originally to test out new type, it’s now extensively used by web designers to fill their designs with texts when a client has not yet supplied it. I suggest we try to stop using it right now.

The original Lorem Ipsum was used to make dummy books. To see how text was to be printed on pages using that particular printer. Most books just consist of type, so there isn’t really a problem there. However, right now, we use the look and feel of Lorem Ipsum to build our pages around.

We base the website on dummy text. There are a number of reasons for that:

Clients are often horrible late with supplying text. To get work done, we decide to use dummy text.
When you create a website for yourself, the content is the most boring part. You want to make it all look pretty and then, perhaps, decide how you want to word your pages.
With dummy text, you can remove or add some easily to make sure it fits your design, without having to worry about the meaning.

Of course, all three of those reasons are “the easy way out“. Instead of dealing with the situation accordingly, we just steer away from it.

How is that wrong, you ask.

However pretty a website might be, the true core of any website is the content, and most often the content comes in the form of text. If you want to be absolutely sure that the content conveys the right message, the design enveloping the content needs to convey the exact same message. If you base the look and feel of your design on dummy text, it’s going to convey something different than the content tries to. (Unless, of course, you’re the owner of lipsum.com, in which case you are absolutely right to use dummy text.)

If your design and content are not going to send the same message to your reader, then you won’t be able to reach them effectively.

How We do it

At my company, we have started demanding our clients to deliver at least the text for the home page and one other page before I even start sketching. Of course we offer advice and tips, as most clients feel like they should write content for the design, instead of the other way around.

In doing so, I can both include the feel of the content into the design, and use the look to make sure my page envelops it correctly. The text then matches the rest of the site, or rather, visa versa.

I have decided to name this method “Content centric design“, which makes it evident that the core of any website should be its content.

How do you feel about this? Do you agree with my reasoning, or not? Let me know in the comments!