Brand, Content & Aesthetics
I saw something that really surprised me the other day. Someone had spent a long time mocking up a portfolio design. It had lots of detail, little shadows and one pixel highlights. You could tell they worked hard on it, but all the content on it was fake. That is to say, it was all Lorem Ipsum and stock images. Do you do this? Then read on, friend.
I would say most websites are made up of three key things: brand, content, and aesthetics. Brand is the set of moral values and perspectives that you produce your content by, therefore brand influences how your content is received emotionally. Design conveys emotion visually i.e. aesthetics and it also presents information logically, i.e. content. So design is made up of two halves. Without content your design isn’t design, but art. Or as Zeldman rather wonderfully put it:
“Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.”—Jeffrey Zeldman
Sure, pure aesthetics will get you by in the short term, but to build meaning you must question purpose in what you do and go deeper. After all, people are going to your website to consume your content, good design makes this easier, great design strengthens the message and therefore the brand.
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3 Responses to ‘Brand, Content & Aesthetics’
I agree with you Ralph. It’s impossible to create a real design without actual content, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used.
Lorem Ipsum serves as a placeholder for an idea. Is it not fair to say that there is good design on sites such as Themeforest, or no…just because they were designed with the intent to sell, instead of adapted to the content in the first place.
It’s possible to find a good design that compliments your content. There will always have to be adjustments to make it work perfectly, but saying one has to be present before the other is a bit far-fetched in my opinion.
I suppose the analogy would be: it’s the difference between an off-the-shelf suit and a tailored one. Themes are a different beast, someone shopping for a theme obviously doesn’t want to invest a lot into their business. What I find really grates with me is when people start with aesthetics for clients and themselves.
If you can’t spend time crafting your own brand and content, then how can you expect a client to pay you to do it? Especially when you have a better idea of how to represent yourself than anyone else does.
Likewise, if you can’t spend time crafting your client’s brand and content, then why are they paying you? They haven’t come to you for just a website, they can get that from Themeforest or another one of these tacky sites, they’ve come to you because they think you offer something those themes don’t. They want you to spend time understanding their business and then they want you to find the best way to represent that business online. It’s a completely different process.
Someone who makes nice graphics in Photoshop can be replaced, but someone who knows how to understand a client’s business—someone who knows how to ask the right questions—is invaluable.
I have to agree with Axel.
Personally, I have used Lorem Ipsum since day one. In my experience it is near impossible getting a client to “cough up” reasonable content prior to the website at least undergoing one round of design. It usually takes a first-round design to actually engage their brains and understand your thought process.
Websites such as Themeforest shouldn’t be branded as “tacky”. They serve an important purpose, whether it’s developing on a shoe-string or lack of knowledge/expertise.
I understand what you are saying about building a brand but I do believe Jeffrey Zeldman was simply restating the classic quote “Content is King”.
We must also remember that developing a website and “crafting” a brand are two entirely different scenarios. I have only walked into one project where a brand was not in place and needed to be “crafted”. In the other instances I was able to build a site with nothing but a logo and style-guide.
It’s a far stretch to say that designing without content is, essentially, not conducive to a great product.
This isn’t a bash, just my two cents.