Why Writing Skills Are Essential For A Designer

Designing is not just about technology; it’s more about people and their preferences upon software. Researches have proven that humans are visually weird; we only remember 10% what they hear while 20% of what they read and 70% what they see. So, to design an excellent graphic, you don’t have to understand your product, more you need to know how your design is going to connect with your viewers. Hence, designers may need to empathize the pain points of viewers to bond with them.

Like designers, great writers also understand the needs of their audiences. They research and develop the content that is complete, informative, engaging, yet precise enough to connect with the audience empathetically.

Moreover, if you’re studying design, in writing a research paper, you should be able to show all your competence and skills in the subject. That’s why many sites provide research paper writing help with professionals who can help you at any time.

Hence, both designers and writers are more or less on the same boat to work on a perfect pattern to satisfy their customers with a tailored approach for each deal. They are both parallel going on the endless journey of content marketing. Also, they exactly know how to deal with different culture and norms; as, what you make for a chef is much different than you prepare for a scientist.

However, when you ask a designer about the importance of writing for designers, a common question always comes up. “Why a designer needs writing skills?”

Most of the designers create a portfolio on different platforms like Dribbble and Behance, and even on their website to showcase their work where they often have limited characters for the content. These platforms mainly focus on design elements and graphical outcomes, but the fact cannot be denied that those defined characters demonstrate the skills of your pitching. And that’s why showing the final product is not just enough!

Here comes the need of writing skills to designers. Content creation is perfect for documenting your work processes, showing your skills to the world, or even building a marketing strategy to get yourself to a decent amount of exposure. So the answer to the above question is a big YES!!! Designers need writing skills. Below are a few reasons why:

1. You can share your experience with the community

Most of the designers want to talk about their work experiences, struggle stories and inspiring tips. On the other hand, some don’t want to because of the assumption of being copied or making junior competitors.

The fact is, writing about the ideas, inspirations; work processes along with some good stories about you will enhance the chances of yourself get a good number of followers. It will benefit not only the designer but also the designing community. Mutual sharing of respectful content is always a way ahead of being in a glass shell. Moreover, not everything you do, design, or create comes only from your imagination. You ever need to inspire others and get inspired by other designers and their projects to make a masterpiece.

2. Content first design

The content first design is a technique that utilizes the content to define the design elements. It’s common to see text, icon and images used throughout the prototyping process of designing while the actual content is included in the last step of work.  Dummy text cannot justify the real needs of design for the content hence leads to the end product playing blind.

Alternatively, Content first design approach helps designers to structure the visual in a better way that guides viewers expertly to achieve their potential objectives. Also, content is essential for demonstrating how the product can satisfy the audience’s needs by thinking about their pain point while designing. You will uncover the solution early, and the customer will be able to understand it better.

Hence, no matter how content-first design has been taken through, it’s obvious to see that content is still the king, especially with the rise of conversational interfaces and responsive revolutions.

3. You can build an audience

There was a time when people had to make an effort to get a decent amount of audience to their websites. However, today’s it is the most convenient ways to get traffic to your work by creating the right content. When it comes to getting some good gigs, it may be challenging to come across new opportunities every time, but now it’s much easier to get an insight into your designs. Writing is a great way to do this, as it can help you establish an online presence in the process. You will love to see the results afterwards that there was a time when you were just starting out and soon how far writing has contributed to your timely rise.

If you are not experienced with writing, there are plenty of useful tools online like Grammarly, Cliché Finder, and Crowd Writer to help you out with your content. As a designer, you can learn from the writing processes of these useful sources and come up with a masterpiece.

4. Writing can help you start a business

It’s a complete package when a client needs a good representation of their product along with reliable content; they know where to go. Also, you can use your portfolio site as a designer blog or even a side project that can later generate you a passive income. There are plenty of designers who are running a successful blog with writing content and showcasing their work parallel. You can create a community of designers to follow your blog with the latest trends and tips that will lead them to be an asset for you in future. Useful content writing tools like Reedsy and Australian Master can take pins out of your head for creating content. It will also help you to launch any other business in future as you will already have a decent pool of audience to communicate with.

A strong visual strategy will push this through a good content. If you do not start creating inspiring visuals and publish them on a website, nobody will hear about them. Use a blog to communicate your ideas and thoughts with your community. If you don’t start right now, nothing will happen.

5. Helps to showcase your skills online

Graphic designers can develop their portfolio creatively with the productive use of the software. However, beautiful icons and appealing fonts cannot cover grammatical mistakes. Also, it may show your designing skills, but an employer may need more than that from you. He/she needs the information to be clearly presented. An additional ability of writing can make the employer appreciate and differentiate you.

6. Content marketing strategy

The parallels between designing and writing are robust when it comes to creating a content marketing strategy. Both consider a variety of complexity to apply. It is essential to maintain the consistency throughout the approach. Great designers understand how to utter the pain points, and good content summarizes the solution into a box. Conjointly both know how to share that story with stakeholders so they can have a precise alignment. Sharing details of the customer’s story allows the product to empathize with the customer’s psychology.

7. Aids in your communication skills

Designers are experts to communicate their ideas through beautiful art visuals. Hence, communication skills are challenging for most designers. They need to articulate ideas to clients; that’s why they have to be able to communicate efficiently on both emails and calls. Writing skills help you to make perfect proposals and to deal with a client on calls more productively. It also adds confidence to your pitch and gets you projects in a hassle-free way. Also, you can gain an appreciation for your persuasive communication from your corporate clients.

Conclusion

“Quality is always better than quantity, even if we talk about content.” (Anonymous).

You don’t have to build an expensive website to polish your writing skills. You can use online platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, Medium, LinkedIn, and Facebook to get yourself noticed. It doesn’t matter the type of content you use, the only purpose of why you are doing and what you put out there is essential to put your soul into the content. You just have to believe, and an occasional writing habit can be a good start.