Designers Working with Writers: Shouldn't They?

When I got my first job in London as a copywriter in 1979 I was paired with an art director called Peter Smitherman. Peter was an outstanding art director by any standards, and he taught me much of what I know about copywriting. The point is, we worked as a team. We worked together for a number of years, and it was a beautiful thing. At times it was hard to find the dividing line between who was the art director and who was the writer. I would adjust my writing to meet the needs of the design. And Peter would work on the design, with a clear understanding of how it needed to work with the text. The process was fluid, usually unspoken. We simply worked well together, and created some wonderful print ads. That time, in the eighties, saw the creation of some incredible print work in the UK, coming from agencies like Abbott Mead Vickers, Saatchi and Saatchi, Collett Dickinson & Pierce and others. Within those agencies, writers were recognized for the incredible value they brought to the process. And all of those writers worked with art directors in much the same way as I worked with Peter Smitherman. The better the relationship, the better the advertising.

But when I look at the teams working on the Web, it's a very different story. Do you find those same kinds of relationships between designers and writers online? Not that I know of. In fact, I have found it more common that the designer's primary relationship is with the programmers.

Does this mean that the value of text online is less than it is offline? I don't think so, not for a second. I think that the text on Web sites is absolutely fundamental to their success or otherwise. When a visitor first comes to your site, it's the text on that first screen that is their primary focus. They read the text to find out if they are 'in the right place'. They read the text to see if it matches their particular objective at that time -- whether that be to buy a product or service, or simply to find information. And the importance of text continues throughout the site. The text is there to inform, to engage, to guide and to excite the reader.

In other words, the text on a Web site is no less important than the text on a print ad. And the same opportunity presents itself: create teams of writers and designers who work together to create pages where the design and the text pull together, work together and communicate in a way that is clear, creative and effective.

But where are these online teams? Why are online writers given such little respect? Why is the designer's primary relationship not with the writer? Why don't online designer/writer teams sit down at the very beginning of the creative process and work in the same way as an offline art director and copywriter? All too often, the writer is brought in only after the designers and programmers have mapped out the structure and design of the site. Writers are brought in simply to be wordsmiths, to add the necessary text, or simply to cut and paste from offline materials and make a few edits to make it 'work online'.

Part of the answer to these questions may lie in the history and origins of commercial sites - the early investment in the technology that delivers the message, but not in the quality of the message itself. But that still doesn't explain why our industry has been so slow to evolve and mature when it comes to the importance of the words, the writing.

Why is it that every user of the Internet, through email, chat, newsgroups, weblogs, newsletters, discussion lists and more is primarily focused on text and voice - but that the creators of commercial and organization sites give text such little attention?

The need for great writing online won't go away. Our readers want it, crave it. It's just a matter of waiting to see how quickly we can get in line with our readers' needs. The sooner we start giving good writers the respect and authority they need in order to do a great job, the sooner we have sites that will serve both our readers and our companies a great deal more effectively.

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