The Divine Intertwine of Writing and Design

If you’re a long-time reader, you’ll spot the flaw in this workflow right away.

See it? A non-writer directs the writing. A non-designer directs the design. And a non-coder directs the developer. It produces bewildering landing pages and convoluted PDFs because nobody in this workstream is happy with the instruction. 

The developer is upset because all the page elements are similar to their current website, but different enough to still require custom coding. The designer’s unhappy because they’ve been told to “maaaaake iiiit pop.” And the writer is unhappy because this topic is irrelevant to the reader. 

This style of work is why there is so much forgettable content out there, or what Carina calls YAWNS: Yet Another White Paper Nobody Sees.

Look around at all the brands you have a crush on. Those are companies that are not doing that. Us included.

At Fenwick, we insist that anyone who will be involved later on in the project is involved up front. We want to talk to the marketing operations person who’ll pull the lists. The demand person who’ll run the campaign. The buyer—we always must consult a real buyer—on what they’d like. And yes, the executive; we can’t have them parachuting in with hidden requirements later.

What this looks like in practice is more people in documents, more people at meetings, and more screen share videos.

The result is a tad messier but we get everyone's ideas upfront. We craft a problem statement to agree on what we're trying to achieve, and invite each team’s unique genius and their wisdom about constraints—for example, “That’s off brand” or "Technically we can’t segment like that.” 

We call this principle Writing x Design, because that’s how it started for us. We learned early on that all writing is better when you involve designers upfront. So too anyone who'll have input later.

It can save you a tremendous amount of rework, grief, and YAWNS.

Fenwick Principle

♟️ Writing x Design

We believe all creative disciplines are best applied simultaneously; that they are all threads of the same cord, carefully intertwined. We involve designers early in writing, writers early in design, and all manner of participants up front.

How to apply today's principle

Ask one person who’s downstream from you to lunch. What’s their process? What makes it easy? What makes it hard? I’ve never not learned a lot.

In the next issue

We had a scientist analyze 54 marketing white papers and they found zero uses of statistical analysis. It’s like marketers don’t know it exists.

Inside Fenwick

Recent work that I'm loving: The Growth Season Challenge for Pilot. We summarized their CFO team's best financial advice for small business owners and crammed it into five-minute emails. (Clarissa and Chloe on graphics.)

Worth reading

Jeffsum. For designers who don’t have a writer, I guess. 

Stories needn’t be hard-hitting. Or about “explosive growth.” People will read about people doing mundane things if the writing is vigorous.

Design trend: Rebuses.

Associating your product with something wacky. B2B marketers at once stand accused of being too vague and being too literal—too much jargon and too much detail. Obaid suggests a third way, at least for commercials.

Humans as a luxury good. Find by Sarah Greesonbach.

AI 2027. An important, nail-biting 10,000-word read. Flawed in many ways, but gripping. My critique: No historians or anyone schooled in statecraft was involved; nothing politically goes wrong, which is pretty ahistorical.

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

Elements of Style, Instagram-ified.

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