Content-First Design: Moving Content Forward
by Sarah Johnson.
$39.95 (print) $24.95 (Ebook).
Publication date: February 13, 2025
How often have you seen a proposed web design that looks nice, but is filled with dummy Lorem Ipsum text? You know it looks nice, but even if you know the purpose of the site, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to see how the site will work for its intended users.
Too many projects are designed like this, and too many of them fail to serve their purpose. People don’t come to a web site to look at a pretty web design; they come to solve a problem, buy a product, or complete a transaction.
Content-first design is a process by which research, exploration, and evaluation of content requirements and user needs inform the structure, layout, flow, and visuals for a digital product. It centers design on what end users need and how the site can fulfill that need.
Content-First Design: Moving Content Forward, by Sarah Johnson, gives you a practical approach to building a customer experience that aligns with the needs of both customers and internal stakeholders. It shows you how to set realistic, yet ambitious, goals and how to plan, prototype, test, and iterate in a content-first way.
Whether you’re a solo content designer supporting multiple products, a product manager trying to embed content thinking into your process, or part of a mature content team looking to scale your impact, this book offers clear, actionable guidance that will get you there.
Inside the Book
Content-First Design leads the reader through the content-first design process from initial discussions about the project to design to development to deployment. Johnson tackles the tough problems content designers face: getting a seat at the table, getting content into projects from the beginning, and keeping content front and center throughout an entire project.
The book also contains a detailed case study following the development of a banking application, co-authored by Shannon Geis, that uses content-first design.
About Sarah Johnson
Content-first Design is the culmination of Sarah Johnson’s passion for content design and her decades-long career as a content strategist, designer, educator and author. She has dedicated her life to helping others find their voice and communicate with purpose.
Sarah has worked with organizations such as Fidelity Investments, Bank Of America, TIAA, and CVS to build content departments, hone creative voice, and develop digital products. She’s published six books, and she teaches content design at Bentley University User Experience Design Center. Sarah has attended the InnerMBA at New York University (NYU) and practices authentic leadership, which guides everything she does in content design.
Learn more about Sarah and her work at ContentFirstDesign.com.