Real-life Examples of Why Content Reigns and Design Boosts

How content and design play together…

  • In the game of chess (kind of hard to shake this analogy when you’re trying to avoid “Content is queen/king.”), the strategies and the moves equate to content. They fascinate chess players and chess fans. The board with its squares keep the content on track.
  • Apple’s product designs for its Macs and iPod garner much attention for their beauty (design), but their insides also do the job well in managing all of the documents, music, and other files (content).
  • Few race cars look as cool as a Porsche, Corvette, T-bird, Mustang, Miata, or pick favorite car. Advertising overtakes the look of the race cars and they look weird on the inside after someone tricks them out for racing purposes (design). But the speed, control, tires, etc. (content) matter more than the car’s exterior (unless you’re the advertiser, of course).
  • MySpace is ugly (design). It’s hard to use until you get the hang of its features. Other social networking sites look better, but MySpace leads the crowd (or is in the top three). Yet, people from many target markets (teen, musicians, businesses) flock the site for what it offers (content). Plenty of sites rely on simple designs with little color, and they succeed.
  • A movie can have beautiful cinematography (design), but no one will see it if they hear the story (content) stinks.

Moral: Content and design need each other, but 99.9% of the time — without content, design can’t do much. Google’s home page practically has no content (or design), but people know what to do.
As a deaf person — I hardly watched TV while growing up (pre-closed-captioned times). The pictures weren’t enough to keep my interest — only in cartoons.
Posted inspired by Just Creative Design‘s big giveaway. So I’m a glutton for contests — only fun ones, though. Just try it with the text sucker on NetDisaster. Take out all the text and see what design tells you.

3 thoughts on “Real-life Examples of Why Content Reigns and Design Boosts”

  1. I always equated a website’s design to a house. The house could be pretty on the outside and welcoming. However, once inside, if the house is lacking furniture or common aesthetics, then the house won’t be so inviting in the future, regardless of the outside appearance.

    The design, in my opinion, is what lures and invites people in. The content and the design work together (with the content being the main driver) to determine if that visitor returns.

    Thank you for all your wonderful analogies.

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