Content Before Design

[adesignrsa]

What are other's thoughts on this?

I'm sitting designing site after site after site and the ones with little or no content supplied before the designing phase are a nightmare.

I'm starting to think that the content, message etc. need to be established, written and photographed / created before the designer starts producing interface concepts.

I feel like a headless chicken right now. This client doesn't know what it wants and we're running in circles!!

(I hardly ever use more than one exclamations :|...)

[vgarcia]

I agree with you*, content is everything and designing without it is very difficult and usually leads to lots of changes.

* exception: webapps where the data will be filled in later. But even then, some test/example data is handy.

[Wolf_22]

I've always considered each individual website as a new invention: each serving it's own purpose. I feel like this is the way content is. If you have a website that you're starting on, and have no idea what purpose it's serving before you even get done designing it, then you'll probably run into a lot of problems.

I run into this a lot! Too many ideas to sort out...

[joebert]

When I was a teenager, I worked for a guy who began building his dream house as soon as he got out of school.
Every weekend he would get somthing done on the house no matter how small or large it was.
He built this house with four bedrooms because his mother always said that one of theese days she hopes he has three kids to drive him insane just like him, his brother, & his sister did to her & he wanted to be prepared.

He was 27 when he finally finished the house, when he was 28 he finally found his wife & they got married.
About a year into the marrige they discovered that he couldn't have children because of an accident which they ended up tracing back to when he was a teenager when he burst into tears claiming he knew this day would come ever since that accident.

His wife, wanting children very badly, ended up divorcing him & marrying his brother.
Him & his brother never really got along too well, his brother & now ex-wife took his house in the divorce & left him with nothing.

I don't know if there's a moral to this story, but it sure reminds me of the situation at hand here.

[adesignrsa]

Originally Posted by joebert

When I was a teenager, I worked for a guy who began building his dream house as soon as he got out of school.
Every weekend he would get somthing done on the house no matter how small or large it was.
He built this house with four bedrooms because his mother always said that one of theese days she hopes he has three kids to drive him insane just like him, his brother, & his sister did to her & he wanted to be prepared.

He was 27 when he finally finished the house, when he was 28 he finally found his wife & they got married.
About a year into the marrige they discovered that he couldn't have children because of an accident which they ended up tracing back to when he was a teenager when he burst into tears claiming he knew this day would come ever since that accident.

His wife, wanting children very badly, ended up divorcing him & marrying his brother.
Him & his brother never really got along too well, his brother & now ex-wife took his house in the divorce & left him with nothing.

I don't know if there's a moral to this story, but it sure reminds me of the situation at hand here.

HAHA, classic. It *almost* drives the point home.

I think if you stopped somewhere around the 'not being able to have kids' bit it would have been fine.

I think you're saying that designing something without having thought about the use of it properly could lead to sterility and your wife leavin... wait... no, thats not it.

hehe, don't worry, I get your point.

[elemental70]

Have some of the content first. The design should flow around the content

[Gamermk]

Originally Posted by adesignrsa

I'm starting to think that the content, message etc. need to be established, written and photographed / created before the designer starts producing interface concepts.

Completely agree all content should be received before design.

And its even more important because design should be done in reverse starting with the lowest content page in your information hierarchy and eventually working upwards to designing the Home page last. (That is a tip I picked up from AlistApart a long time ago and initially I thought it was a little silly, but then I gave it some thought, tried it and swear by it now)

The reality unfortunately is that very few clients come to you with all of their content and they always want to start by designing the home page.

[Iceman90]

Originally Posted by Gamermk

The reality unfortunately is that very few clients come to you with all of their content and they always want to start by designing the home page.

They don't need to come to you with the content. Give them some time to get it together after they sign the contract and agree to have you build them a website.

If done right, I could see this bringing in steady business. Work on Client A's design while Client B is writing content, then work on Client B's design while A is looking over the site and making revisions, and Client C is writing content.

[icovey]

I find that most importantly you need to know the purpose and message that you want a site to deliver before you get going. If not your site is essentially doomed to fail.

Knowing the structure for the site means that your final design is like to be more suitable to its design requirements, but it's not as important as having an appropriate focus.

Making sure the i's are dotted and t's crossed can then happen later in the project.

Cheers,

[vgarcia]

Originally Posted by Iceman90

If done right, I could see this bringing in steady business. Work on Client A's design while Client B is writing content, then work on Client B's design while A is looking over the site and making revisions, and Client C is writing content.

Or even better, get together with a copywriter and offer an additional well-paying service

[SoftwareSquared]

Originally Posted by vgarcia

Or even better, get together with a copywriter and offer an additional well-paying service

Smart idea vgarcia,

I think that Content development (writing) and the development of a site goes hand in hand because the content should be fresh and different allowing the designer/developer to get ideas from it. Most of my clients have some content ready at the time that work begins but delivery in good time. Without any content though it could be very tough to get your client's ideas represented correctly.

That's my two cents!

[superuser2]

If it's your own site, have content first. Because if you're content is not really that good then you have wasted a lot of time. But if it's a client's site.. don't demand content first. Because once you have your contract they are obligated to pay you no matter what.

[Stormrider]

I think it is important to know WHAT will go on the site, but the exact content isn't important really. You need to know what to design towards, but the text content of it is pretty irrelevant until the design is ready and you can drop it in. It is important to be clear about what the content will be though for the design, just don't need to have the content itself. Page titles, strap lines etc are all needed before though, obviously.

[C. Ankerstjerne]

Having contents before design seems to be to be a better semantical approach. CSS allows for designs to be changed with relative easy, once you have all your contents semantically presented. No matter what, a paragraph of text is a paragraph of text, but the design of that paragraph can be changed a thousand times with CSS.

Furthermore, if I was a client, I'd much rather prefer to see the contents slowly evolving into a design, than seing an emtpy shell with no real way of knowing how it will look with text.

[NELSON PASS]

Hallo

well it depent in design of site some site cans be
up running with not all content ready
depends in costomer how much wanting spend
see

thank you

[felgall]

It is extremely difficult to write the CSS (design) for a site before the HTML (content) that it is to reference exists.

[bluedreamer]

If I haven't got any content I just add my own until the real stuff comes along - either Lorum impsum... or I also have a stock of various images in assorted sizes that can be used for things like product images etc. If I need to populate a database so I can style the results data again I have some dummy data which I use.

I'll agree that having the content is the better option but in the real world this won't always happen and you have to work around it.

[felgall]

Having the real content means that you wont have to rework the design when the real content turns out to be totally different from what you were told it would be. In the real world of course the customer would just expect you to redo all of the work over again instantly and not charge them anything extra for doing so.

[Julian Moors]

Originally Posted by joebert

When I was a teenager, I worked for a guy who began building his dream house as soon as he got out of school.
Every weekend he would get somthing done on the house no matter how small or large it was.
He built this house with four bedrooms because his mother always said that one of theese days she hopes he has three kids to drive him insane just like him, his brother, & his sister did to her & he wanted to be prepared.

He was 27 when he finally finished the house, when he was 28 he finally found his wife & they got married.
About a year into the marrige they discovered that he couldn't have children because of an accident which they ended up tracing back to when he was a teenager when he burst into tears claiming he knew this day would come ever since that accident.

His wife, wanting children very badly, ended up divorcing him & marrying his brother.
Him & his brother never really got along too well, his brother & now ex-wife took his house in the divorce & left him with nothing.

I don't know if there's a moral to this story, but it sure reminds me of the situation at hand here.

Great story, but I don't think it's relevant to what was being asked. To answer the question the company I work for tend to work with mind maps to create some sort of structure which would then form a sitemap (from this you can work out how deep the website will be). You really need to ask the client for samples of websites he/she likes the look of and you can then knock up a few rough designs. The trick here is to remind them they're being charged an hourly rate (please say you charge by the hour).

[EJ]

Well, I was going to say that designing the site before having all or some of the content is a fine idea, but then I remembered a few times when I did the design, paid for it to be coded then the whole idea failed...

But for me, designing the site and having all the ideas first is fine, and the way I do things. Just as long as you know where you're going to get your content from afterwards.

[linkin99]

I feel that for most of the time, having the content first - at least enough of what you minimally need to build the main idea- helps a lot in design structure and makes things go much faster. I'm developing as few sites right now, and the only things I'm preparing right now is the content. Once I feel that I have enough content to make the site worth visiting, I'm going to design and code it.

[bluedreamer]

Originally Posted by felgall

Having the real content means that you wont have to rework the design when the real content turns out to be totally different from what you were told it would be.

Of course if you design a the site using CSS you can easily/quickly restyle if needed - separation of content and presentation and all that!

[adesignrsa]

Trust me, I have lorem ipsum coming out of my a**.

I think what some people that commented didn't think about is that sure, there are mind maps that will eventually become the site maps, but I'm talking beyond that stage where you are starting to create the site.

Each page for instance will need content. Be it a list of products, and explanation, whatever... and if you don't know what the headings are going to be, how long the paragraphs are going to be on average... designing becomes a guessing game.

When you markup a page (HTML only) and only then start designing, you are effectively taking the information to be shown to the world and suggesting a nice way of people looking at it (by using CSS and images).

I think most people are in agreement that content first is best, but not always possible with some clients (normally the less organized ones). In these cases, lorem ipsum will be used and any fixes will -as Julian Moores commented- be charged for hourly.

Thanks for everyone's input.

[joebert]

What about the non-spatial aspects of the design ?

There's more to my old bosses story.

About half a year later the x-wife & brother were expecting their first child, convinced they would have a girl they prepared one of the rooms accordingly with girly stuff & never had the doctor tell them what sex the baby was.
The baby ended up being a boy, not having the funds to go out & buy all new stuff, they were forced to take everything back & trade it in.

A year or so later the two were once again pregnant, this time they thought for sure they would have a girl, but remembered last time & decided to plan for a boy instead.
Once again, they were forced to trade everything in that they had bought in anticipation of a boy.

The couple waited 3 years before their third child, this time they decided to go with a yellow Winnie The Pooh theme that would work for either scenario.
This time they didn't need to trade anything in, the baby was lost & she was deemed unable to have anymore children after complications during surgery.

[Wolf_22]

Originally Posted by joebert

When I was a teenager, I worked for a guy who began building his dream house as soon as he got out of school.
Every weekend he would get somthing done on the house no matter how small or large it was.
He built this house with four bedrooms because his mother always said that one of theese days she hopes he has three kids to drive him insane just like him, his brother, & his sister did to her & he wanted to be prepared.

He was 27 when he finally finished the house, when he was 28 he finally found his wife & they got married.
About a year into the marrige they discovered that he couldn't have children because of an accident which they ended up tracing back to when he was a teenager when he burst into tears claiming he knew this day would come ever since that accident.

His wife, wanting children very badly, ended up divorcing him & marrying his brother.
Him & his brother never really got along too well, his brother & now ex-wife took his house in the divorce & left him with nothing.

I don't know if there's a moral to this story, but it sure reminds me of the situation at hand here.

...and his nickname in pre-school was "lucky"...