In this article, we will explore the relationship between copy and design. We’ll also talk about how to combine them for optimal results in your company’s marketing campaign. Finally, the article will discuss integrating the two processes for optimal results. What is the relationship between design and copy to obtain the best results? Both are required to create great campaigns, and both must be executed flawlessly for advertising and websites to get the best potential outcomes. Excellent copy combined with poor design will result in a poor campaign, while great design combined with a poorly written document will fail. To attain the best outcome, both parties must collaborate, and doing so is both an art and a science.
Few important items to remember while combining copy and design:
1. The Offer is Set in Motion by the design
Design, first and foremost, sets the tone for your offer. The design aims to help your material be read by selecting the correct manner. In his book The Adweek Copywriting Handbook, Joseph Sugarman discusses this. He writes in Chapter 4: all of the aspects in a commercial are intended to achieve one goal: getting you to read the opening sentence of your text. In the sixth chapter, he writes: the arrangement of your ad and the opening few lines of your ad must create the most favorable purchasing environment for the sale of your product or service.
As you can see from these quotations, the purpose of design is to get your material read and create the proper “purchasing environment” for your offer. If you run a creative business, your website should reflect that. It should be professional, current, and creative. Your choice of colors, typefaces, and layouts will position your company in one way or another. If your design seems like it was designed in 2001, you’ll be viewed as being behind the times, even if you aren’t; but, if it follows current design trends, you’ll be perceived as modern, etc. The design of your website impacts how your material is read and how your firm is viewed.
Epipheo’s design distinguishes them and promotes them as a creative company. A sale sign is another example. The objective of a sale sign is to lure customers into a business to purchase things that are on sale. The sign’s purpose is to make it apparent that a deal is going place. As a result, the copy’s perception is influenced by the design choices used. These signs don’t have to be as professionally constructed, and they frequently employ a lot of red or yellow to draw attention to the fact that something is on sale. Design is used in each instance to establish the correct tone and atmosphere for the writing. The incorrect design style may ruin even the most OK text, but an excellent copy is just as vital.
2. The goal of your copy is for it to be read
The purpose of writing copy, on the other hand, is for it to be read. You don’t write copy solely to fill a page with words. Don’t include your text in an ad, letter, or website if you don’t believe your text will be seen. That’s all there is to it. The text must be read since it ultimately sells your goods or service. Every headline, subheadline, and caption defines what the design is trying to say. Although a picture is worth a thousand words, the copy is the first line that makes the 1,000 words make sense. Consider it this way: What would you think if you saw a stunning image of a shoreline with no comments? “Wow, that’s a lovely coastline,” you’ll think, and that’ll be the end of it. What if you include text like, “Get beachfront property with the greatest views in LA County.” You’ve figured out what’s going on at this point. The advertisement makes sense. It has significance. As a result, the design does not function on its own. You’ll need strong content to get your point over and have the image make sense. There is no way to make a sale if there isn’t a copy. However, a copy is often overlooked by designers. Maybe they’re a touch too enamored with their design, but whatever the case, the design might wind up hiding the text you paid a great copywriter to create (or that you painstakingly wrote yourself). This occurs regularly. A website’s design makes it difficult to see the primary headline, while a subway ad’s intricate design blends in with the text, making it difficult to read and interpret its message. To attain the best outcome, every project should function together, and design and copy end up being equally crucial. Because you’ll lose trust with your target audience if you have excellent text but lousy design, your message will be useless. On the other hand, a beautiful design that conceals the text will reduce a campaign’s efficacy. Both are crucial for setting the correct tone and ensuring that your material is read and your message is received.
3. Making Copy and Design Complement Each Other
Designers and copywriters must collaborate on projects for a notion to be successful. A design may need to be altered from time to time to make it less distracting and concentrate the reader’s attention on the material. For example, a billboard may need a basic design that clearly shows the text. The copy will be lost if there is too much going on in terms of design. Sometimes the text has to be tweaked to match the design better. A headline may seem appropriate for a website, but when seen in context, it becomes clear that it has to be shorter or longer to fit into the design. To get the optimum outcome, both parties must be ready to collaborate. Designers must understand the value of developing designs that draw the reader’s attention to the content, and copywriters must be flexible enough to craft headlines and copy that complement the design idea in some instances. Both parties must give and take, but a copy should never be the forgotten stepchild. If you’re going to spend time writing text, your designer should design a layout that guarantees it gets read. So, how do you go about doing that? Let’s talk about it immediately.
Tips for Effective Design & Copy
1. Always choose typefaces with a lot of contrast.
First, ensure that your typefaces and the backdrop behind them have a strong contrast. Dark typefaces should always be used on light backgrounds, while soft fonts should be used on dark backgrounds. This should be self-evident, yet for some reason, individuals often overlook this crucial guideline. Let’s have a look at a few instances.
- Example 1: Signals
The homepage design for Signals by Hubspot is an excellent example of solid contrast. The white font on the blue call-to-action button and the black font on a white backdrop produces high contrast, easy-to-read text.
- Example 2: 5 North Marketing
To have a strong contrast, your backdrop does not have to be white, and your typeface does not have to be white or black. For example, 5 North Marketing employs a white font on a green background in the header and other portions of the site and green and charcoal fonts on a white background to produce a great difference between the scenes and the typefaces.
- Example 3: Tiny Letter
For their “How It Works” section, Tiny Letter, on the other hand, could use a little more contrast. The text is difficult to see due to the mix of a tiny black body font on a red backdrop.
2. Check whether your font blends in with the backdrop picture.
The next step is to ensure that your typeface does not mix with the backdrop picture. This is similar to the last point; only it frequently involves visuals. Fonts are often set on an image backdrop and then blended in, which is not ideal. Consider your design as a magazine cover to solve this issue. The placement of headlines over a background picture in magazines is superb, and the text is effortless to read. Why? Because they must be read while in line at the grocery store or perusing the magazine rack. You want your designs to be as easy to read as possible.
- Example 1: Magazines
The Real Simple magazine cover below is an excellent example of headlines that stand out without merging with the background picture. It’s easy for headlines to fade in with a view like this, but they make sure there’s a lot of contrast between the headlines and the backdrop so that all languages are legible.
- Example 2: Flickr
Flickr recently redesigned their site, which included maintaining a solid contrast between the typefaces and the picture backdrop, a complex undertaking. As a result, the text is easily legible and shines out against the background picture.
- Example 3: Indochino
We don’t want to knock on Indochino since they’re a great brand, but their web page’s language might stand out more from the backdrop picture because some of the letters blend in. One approach to fix this issue is to utilize a containment box like the one seen in the Best Buy image below. The image can be seen well, and the writing stands out a little more.
- Example 4: The Style Guide at Best Buy.
3. Make use of all available elements to bring the reader’s attention to your headlines and material.
Best Buy’s style guide gives an outstanding description of applying design components correctly. It reads: To bring attention to headlines and make typography more readable, graphic elements should be incorporated. Isn’t it brilliant? Shouldn’t graphical components aid in drawing attention to your headlines and improve your typography’s legibility? Yes, and this should be your approach to every visual element. It would be best if you employed every aspect available to capture the reader’s attention to headlines and bring them into your material. (Unfortunately, despite its obviousness, this is a rule that is disregarded much more often than most people would want to acknowledge.) This implies you should analyze every graphical element you add to your site to ensure it aids in reading your material. Probably, the photo of a lovely, smiling model you just posted is diverting buyers’ attention away from your headline or call to action. Some instances are as follows:
- Example 1: Vero
The Vero site makes superb visual elements to get visitors to read the headline and content. As shown below, the top of their web page employs minimal visuals to make their header and content stand out more.
- Example 2: Single Grain
Singe Grain also performs a beautiful job of focusing visitors on their headlines and leading them down a path to read their material utilizing visual components.
4. Reverse type should be used rarely.
Last but not least, the reverse type should be used sparingly. One of the most famous copywriters of all time, David Ogilvy, was well-known for his dislike of reverse type. He was noted for citing research proving that reading was more complex and made it more challenging to remember knowledge. Colin Wheildon, an Australian editor, did a study to examine whether reverse type affected reading comprehension. Here’s a rundown of the most important findings:
70% of subjects had a strong understanding, 19% had a medium grasp, and 11% had a poor grasp of black writing on a white backdrop. On the other hand, 0 percent had a strong sense, 12 percent had a good grip, and 88 percent had a poor understanding of the white text on a black background. Isn’t it a significant achievement? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes When white lettering was placed on a dark backdrop, no one was able to comprehend it well. The effects were essentially equal when white lettering was applied on various color backgrounds, such as blue and purple. So, should you never type in reverse? There are several instances when it is acceptable, such as secondary components. However, suppose you genuinely want to boost retention on essential portions of your sites or advertisements. In that case, you’ll probably want to save reverse type for material that isn’t as important to your campaign’s success.
- Example 1: KISSmetrics
The KISSmetrics blog is a great example of properly utilizing the reverse type. The main blog section uses black text on a white backdrop to improve readability. However, the secondary content, the button text, and the tagline are written in reverse type.
- Example 2: Generation Kill
The wrong usage of reverse type may be seen on the HBO website for the Generation Kill miniseries. For vast sections of text, it employs a tiny white font on a black backdrop, which is never a wise choice.
Conclusion
We’ve learned from these instances that design and text are essential for a campaign’s success. However, expertly written content on a distracting design will not provide the same effects as the same material on a plan that pulls readers in and focuses their attention on the headlines and copy.
To do so, keep the following in mind:
- Always make sure that the typefaces and backgrounds have a lot of contrast.
- Make sure your typeface doesn’t mix with the picture in the backdrop.
- Make the most of every aspect to bring attention to your headlines and content.
- Reverse type should be used rarely.
These guidelines will lead to a fantastic design that works with your content to get the best outcomes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do brand copy and design work together?
A: Brand copy is the written words that stand out to customers when your company’s logo, website layout, etc. It includes taglines and even jingles or songs used in advertising campaigns. Design refers to how companies will convey their brand visually through images and colors, shapes, fonts, etc.
Should design or copy come first?
A: In most cases, design should come first.
Is copy more important than design?
A: It is essential to have both copy and design. A copy can be found in branding, taglines, logos, slogans, etc. Design for the products can be found in websites or apps that have a cohesive aesthetic feel to them
Related Tags
- what is copywriting in graphic design
- how to test copy
- better copywriting
- copywriting vs. graphic design
- how to write UX copy