"Designers are divorced from the content"
Mark: To Comic Sans, exactly, and that’s one of the difficulties, there’s been a lot of talk about art direction on the web, and I see that as the biggest barrier to art direction is that designers are divorced from the content.
Paul: I mean, this is almost quite depressing.
Mark: Yes, really I…
Paul: It’s not really happening.
Mark: Sleepless nights!
Paul: It’s not happy idea, because, I mean, fundamentally, that isn’t going to change, we’re not going to get into a situation, you know, because rightly want to be able to change and update and alter content on their own website and that makes a lot of sense, which means even if you have the content up-front, it may change further down the line. I guess maybe the tone doesn’t.
Marcus: I was going to say you’re looking at tone here.
Mark: The tone, you’re looking at branding and you’re looking at designers being involved right at the offset.
Marcus: And I think that is better now than it was even two years ago.
Mark: Oh, it is, yeah, it is, yeah, absolutely.
Marcus: I mean, we are looking now at involving copywriters, we are pulling copywriters, we’re talking to our clients about employing copywriters through us, that’s new.
Paul: And from the start of the process as well.
Mark: Yes, right. So, we’re doing the same, we’re looking at employing content strategists rather than actually writers, more from a branding perspective, because that kind of stuff, you know, doesn’t really change, depending on the words that you, the values of the client are still communicated and it’s aligning, it’s the designer’s job to align the typography, not just the font, but the way the information is structured and working with a copywriter to make sure the typeface matches the tone of voice. and all of that is a package. So, that’s what I mean about the surface plane; typography shouldn’t be relegated to: “choose a typeface and away you go”
— http: //boagworld.com/podcast/169
