The Strangest Secret is strange indeed, shared quietly amongst knowing entrepreneurs for decades. I first heard of it late last year during a meeting with successful business owners. They mentioned it in passing, and then declared how it’s changed their lives and those around them. If you haven’t heard of The Strangest Secret, you’ll be glad you finally did. Just be sure to pay it forward.
As creatives — from content writers to art directors — we all occasionally suffer from creative block. Sometimes it’s about overcoming procrastination, and sometimes it’s about bringing fresh, semi-genius concepts to the studio. So we asked some of our creative friends around the globe: How do you get unstuck creatively?
I believe design shapes the world, and PR can help give the industry a bigger and brighter stage. That’s why I’m delighted with my recent appointment as the National PR Chair for the Graphic Designers of Canada (GDC), which allows me to help foster understanding and appreciation of design across Canada and around the globe.
When is design, art — or art, design? From the web designer and content producer (including the web copywriter) perspective, how does the answer to this question impact the design or content creation process? Many designers also self-identify as artists and vice versa, so how does negotiating the relationship between design and art work in practice? We asked some of our Webcopy+ design partners to share their thoughts.
You wouldn’t use Comic Sans if you expect to be taken seriously, and you heard somewhere Arial is supposed to be a “safe” choice…for some reason. Knowing how to use typography for business advantage, is partly why web designers, graphic designers and web copywriters have jobs. What is typography and why is it so important?
It should, because big data is at the foundation of all the megatrends happening today, from social to mobile to cloud to gaming. And big data is not about the data at all, but about the analytics, and how you (yes, even a web content writer or designer) use the results.
Are web copywriters sexy? Not necessarily. But we suggested that’s the case in an April Fools’ prank that’s generated laughs across the Web.
Effective content marketing is intentionally crafted, but easily taken for granted — especially if it’s working its magic. You’d never say something like, “Awesome copy, it made me buy that thing!” Well…maybe, if you’re a word nerd, or a web copywriter. Here’s a secret ingredient from our toolbox: using psychology in content marketing, for the win.
Think website User Experience (UX) and the mind jumps immediately to design and structure, not necessarily to content strategy or writing. Yet, effective writing is increasingly important to good UX. So, what is UX writing?
Allow a web copywriter some alliterative, homophonic license: “Usability” used to be what the business, IT and design worlds referred to as “user-friendly” — that something should be easy, convenient and practical to use. It’s a concept as familiar and necessary to customer experience as “the customer is always right.”
