---
layout: post
title: Mastering content
tags: [ design, development ]
published: true
---

Many times I wonder why there are such brilliant websites and the people behind
them are such great masterminds. I'm already assuming there needs to have a bit
of genius, not just creativity. I'm talking about the core of _every_ website:
**content.**

Imagine you care about content already, but in what way? Do you design for the
content or the other way around? Do you create a layout based on the
information/content you have or do you try and generate content based on the
lovely yet empty work of art you've created with Photoshop?

Every piece of content has its weight inside a website, acknowledging that is a
major step towards balance and success. I took this into consideration when
building my last project with a local client, in which he asked for many many
chunks of information all organized across pages. Measuring each chunk of
information takes credit in the definition of a proper layout in which each
portion can be more relevant or not through width, height, color, typography,
everything.

_Content, not data!_ It is our job as designers/engineers to make content out
of data that a client gives us. No matter how much a client sees _their
content,_ it's still **data** for us and it's also our job to
help the client understand what data should be like in a website and what
importance it should have to achieve better results. I'm not saying we should
override their needs, we actually need to listen to what they want, we're not
wizards :P We can even pretend we're a regular user of theirs and play the
game, a lot of results come from such an approach concerning usability and
accesibility.

End of story
------------

Content is what grabs people's attention on a website and the way it's
explicit. You can even have a beautiful background and today's grungy trends
and everything, but if your content is not meaningful and well marked up then
something's definitely wrong.