A newsletter for timeless workplace writing and design wisdom

How to Be Your Designer’s Favorite Writer

Often, I have written something I thought was my best work, then not shared it out of embarrassment for how the final designed version looked. Sometimes the body copy was an eye-straining full screen-width. Or the text was tiny. Or the graphics were distracting.

One time, I wrote an ebook that was a dark meditation on the future of AI where the designer added smiling software clouds and the result was … unsettling. 

Every one of these instances was due to the classic writer-to-designer fence toss where we never got to collaborate. I was half the communication problem but I didn’t know which half. We both worked in silence.

Today, 10 tips for helping those designers understand you so you both get the portfolio piece you deserve.

Invite your designer in early—or at the very least, talk

To understand just how easy it is to miscommunicate, consider the tapping problem, which goes like this: Pick a partner. Think of a popular song. Tap out the beat of that song on a table and ask your partner to guess the song. 

Actually try it. Listeners are flummoxed. Whereas tappers grow frustrated—to them, it’s beyond obvious. But it’s only obvious because they don’t realize they’re the only one hearing the song in their head. 

Writing and design handoffs are full of tapping. That’s why Fenwick has its own design team and why we practice what we call integrated writing and design. We pull designers in at the ideas stage. They’re equipped to communicate to a whole neglected half of people’s brains and tell us things we never thought of, like “Actually, this should be a chart” or “Can this have a different analogy? That won’t work visually.” 

It’s why when we recently updated our internal workflow, Carina collapsed what used to be two Kanban stages—“writing” and “design”—into one: “working.” 

And it’s why I’ve developed the following rules for myself when handing things off. 

10 writer-to-designer handoff tips

1. Add more subtitles and interstitials than you think necessary—These chunk the text into composable bits, indicate where each page can end, and offer options. 

2. Leave annotations that over-explain what you want—Rather than write “Place graphic here,” explain that graphic. This is the tapping problem. Your designer has their own mind and can’t know yours.

An example of a Fenwick annotation.

3. Put those annotations in brackets—That way, if the text gets pasted without formatting, the annotations are still clear. If you don’t, it’s all too easy for a designer to accidentally include “Put an image of a robot riding a horse here” into the body text where it hardens into place and is forgotten.

4. Use a consistent color to distinguish those annotations—We use blue. It makes for quick skimming. 

5. Explain the effect you hope to have—Say, “This is meant to be comedically inadequate” or “We need them to draw a connection between the paragraph and illustration.” It frees your designer to innovate. Whereas if you just say, “Make it bluer,” they’ll have no idea why.

6. Send a screen share video—Videos help you summarize your thinking. They also convey helpful nonverbal cues so your designer knows whether you feel strongly about the request or not.

For example, in the video below, I knew my feedback was imprecise and chose that format to convey my hesitation. 

7. Give specific examples—Provide an example image, or rough sketch the thing yourself. Yes, it takes time. But less time than going back and forth trying to explain how to change something they’ve already produced.

8. Complete the data—Sometimes graphics contain data. Always generate that data yourself. For example, in a recent ebook, I noted that we needed a mockup of a spreadsheet, to which Clarissa rightfully replied, “Where will the numbers come from?” Save everyone time and provide that data yourself. 

9. Offer fallback options—It offers your designer freedom, and also helps them see what you're asking for from multiple angles.

10. Put the images in a folder—And name them.

And if you want to understand the design side of the fence, make your own ebook

I’ve never gained a clearer appreciation for how difficult it is to design than a few winters ago when our designers were on vacation and I tried to teach myself InDesign. All I learned from an online course and dozens of hours was that 10,000 more hours were needed. Especially to produce the works like the ones below, or a whole publication, like Amanda and Donnique recently did.

And this is despite the fact I had written that very ebook myself. So much time had elapsed I’d forgotten the details. Looking at my own annotations, all I heard was meaningless tapping.

For next week

Book coffee with a designer you work with. Review the above list together. What do they think? Adopt at least one practice.

Chris Gillespie
CEO

Letters is inspired by conversations with the Fenwick team. Meet them. Our artwork is by Haven Peckover.

In the next issue

A season recap and a story about false summits.

Writing tip

Halve your web copy 

Before writing web copy, always find your word or character count limit for each section. And whatever that limit is, halve it. That’s your goal. The common impulse among us writers is to write to that limit. Whereas audiences will almost always prefer you not. 

What we're reading

No more "make it pop." How to give better feedback to designers. (My own.)

Find the poets. A must-read meditation on the value of poetry at work.

Just three percent of board members have a marketing background which may explain why it’s so difficult for marketers to earn approval.

The advice column: an underused format in B2B.

The rule of one. Two purposes per email is one too many.

Help a B2B writer. Not new, but resurfacing in case you haven’t heard.

F*ck Oatly, by Oatly.

A delightful design portfolio.