Workflow.md

• ##Content Inventory

  • Usually done in conjunction with the client, I take stock of what content they already have, what content they want to have, and what content they might need in the future. This includes sorting through visual and other multi-media assets like logos and photos.

• ##Content Mapping

  • The next step is to map the existing content using simple diagrams, usually just pencil sketches. These diagrams help to suss out how the content flows and is connected. Later on more of these maps will be made to help sort out navigation and UI.

• ##Designing in Text

  • Now is when the actual generation and making of a new design begins. Key to "readable" content is structure...anyone who has ever seen a painting by Picasso, or read fiction by Gertrude Stein or Virginia Woolf knowns this well. As modernists (or in the case of Stein and Picasso, modernist cubists) they intentionally played with the structure of the content in their work so that individuals, concepts, characters, and things aren't always bounded—often freely flowing into one another. This has an, in my opinion, excellent effect—offering new views on the mundane or everyday. It is, however, a bit less effective when you want folks to be able to quickly and clearly identify and locate information on a website. To create well structured content I write it all out, usually using markdown, but sometimes by hand. After having written all of the content, or at least sketched it out in markdown, I'm left with a basic skeleton for the new product. From there it is a matter of fleshing out, and cleaning up...ironing. Lots and lots of ironing.