The Relationship between Copy and Design

140617 - Blog - Copy & DesignMany web designers finish an entire project before remembering that they need a copywriter to fill in all those nifty little design elements, while most writers never even see the destination site their copy will grace. Although clearly complementary, for some reason these two disciplines insist upon existing in totally separate bubbles. In reality, though, copy and design are symbiotic, and need to be treated as such.

When you walk into a bank, you might think twice about dropping your deposit off with a teller who’s wearing jeans and a tank top; that image just does not fit the message of a bank. Similarly, it would feel weird to visit a website that looked all crisp and professional and then used a bunch of casual slang straight out of Urban Dictionary for the copy.

At the same time, this doesn’t mean that either casual copy or casual dress code is inherently inferior; it’s just a matter of context. That bank-inappropriate tank top would look right at home in a yoga studio, for example, while Urban Dictionary is the perfect antidote for the usual dull prose when a site wants to target a younger, hipper demographic.

In addition to ensuring that voice and appearance of your site are on the same wavelength, it’s important to think about layout before the writing ever begins. The landing page will read very differently on a site that has one large field for text compared to three tiny ones. And what about the call to action? Is that tacked onto the end, or does it have its own button? The design and writing combinations are endless, which makes it that much more difficult to piece them all together in a sensible fashion after they’re already finished. When built as two separate halves, copy and design may or may not work well as one whole.

Both the designers who tacks on copy as an afterthought and the writer who’s kept in the dark about the big picture end up in the same boat: drifting at first, then a mad scramble at the end. Neither of those is much fun. Although the current trend is to look at design and copy as two completely separate skill sets, the end product would make much more sense if both elements were developed in tandem rather than in parallel.


Maarit Miller is a writing junkie who will always love the Oxford comma.