Derek Powazek’s article “Calling All Designers: Learn to Write!” rightly argues that designer can create better online user experience by writing well.

He states that “…when it comes to experience on the web, there’s no better way to create it than to write, and write well.”


He comments on Flickr.com user experience as “open, encouraging, happy, and excited”. He relates too how he was won over by Photojojo.com ‘s “contagious excitement” that results him in subscribing their newsletter.

He also makes a great point that the choice of word in every button, every link and every title designer should be concerned with as much as the colors, the pixels.

Derek even went as far as to suggest that clients who have a designer who says they’re not a writer should look elsewhere and “find one who is.”

Text is the interface that your user look at and act upon it – whether to subscribe to a newsletter, commit themselves to a cause, getting to open their wallet or just to assure them.

My years of web design and development, I have learned that: when companies plan on building a website, they always underestimate the job of writing and editing its words. They usually delegate the task to an over-work admin staff who merely copy and paste what in their Word or PowerPoint files.

Professional writer are seldom or in fact never on the team when the web project kicks off.

A web designer worth their gold should be comfortable in not just color, graphics, layout, client-side coding but also writing as well!

It can no longer be consider a softskill any more. It a core skill.