Designing with Data: A Recipe for Content Marketing that Matters

Everybody loves a great story but in the crowded content marketing landscape, your stories need to stand apart. There are two vital ingredients to create stories that travel far:

Design and data.

Design and data can be a beautiful – and powerful - coupling if approached correctly – and it’s easy to understand why.

Your audience, be they customers, journalists, influencers or advocates expect information to be delivered to them in ways that they can immediately understand.

From a simple local business website to a government information portal, you have a few seconds of attention to communicate and be understood.

More than this, well executed ‘information design’ establishes trust.

Don’t believe me? Ask yourself, if you’re choosing a restaurant, lawyer or even a new vet, if their website still looks like it was designed in the 90’s and doesn’t work properly on the mobile phone or tablet that you’re very likely to be using, are you put off?

Would you reflexively look elsewhere for an alternative option? Thought so.

Design goes a long way in making a visitor at ease.

When you pair inclusive and engaging design with interesting data, you create engaging and meaningful content for your audience that can be easily absorbed, valued and actioned.

The fact is, too many content marketing strategies are limited by the fact that they have great, valuable data but no way to communicate it effectively – or beautiful design that ultimately says nothing of substance.

Many of the best content marketing pieces start with a great insight - the data hook if you like. The insight that makes the audience say ‘wow I didn’t know that, I want to know more’.

Data adds value to what you are saying, and allows the audience to get more out of your content than just something visually pleasing to look at.

Without it, your design is just superficial and likewise, data without a beautiful delivery mechanism won’t travel far.

So, how do I create design and data-driven content?

Superior content marketing starts with a hook. Assuming you have a great insight that can be communicated, the challenge is to decide how to display this information.

This is a problem solving exercise. A lot of the time, designers take the easy way out and move unthinkingly into infographics territory.

However, though we love a powerful infographic, there are many more possibilities when it comes to information design. Just take a look at iconic pieces like Aaron Koblin’s map of flight patterns:

Isn’t that lovely? With so many possibilities to communicate your message, there’s no excuse for not taking a few steps outside the box

It’s important to establish the design and way of delivering your information that best communicates your story – not going with the expected or easy.

There are lots of examples to take inspiration from to communicate compelling concepts, business-critical insight as well as more political dimension:

The beautiful image above (and others here) show you the racial segregation of particular US locations. Red is White, Blue is African American, Green is Asian, Orange is Hispanic, Grey is Other, and each dot represents 25 people.

It’s a visually stunning example of information design that allows you to digest what you are looking at almost instantly – and move quickly to consider the implications and how you feel about what you’re seeing.

Here at Blueclaw, we created a the EU Tweetgraph that launched just before the UK’s EU referendum.

It told the user how many tweets had been written in the last 24 hours about ‘remain’ compared to ‘leave’. It was a great hot topic piece that got people talking, with immediate insight into the tone of the debate at each point in time.

Of course, the Information is Beautiful site is built entirely around the relationship between data and design that we’re talking about in this blog -

We thoroughly recommend regularly visiting Information is Beautiful.

All of these example spark curiosity, engagement and action, supported by solid data that is easily navigated - but the foundation idea must be solid.

The stronger your idea, the more the stories will flow.

I’ve decided how I will display the information, am I ready to start designing?

In essence? Yes. But here are some things you need to consider whilst you’re designing:

• Wireframe your content marketing design first, it’s like thinking out loud on paper, and immeasurably useful to test your approach.

Just because it works in your head doesn’t mean it will work when you get onto the computer. Wire framing allows you to consider all the things you probably didn’t when you were considering the concept.

• Don’t over-complicate your design. Remember your audience needs to be able to navigate your design without having to think too hard about it.

The best designs provide an efficient delivery mechanism for ideas. If the recipient has to think hard to interpret what they’re seeing, the design has failed.

• Keep the amount of scrolls/navigation buttons etc to a minimum. This doesn’t mean make it extremely boring - ideally, the user still needs to enjoy the process of exploring your piece and benefit from a sense of discovery. It’s a fine balance to strike.

• Make sure whatever you are designing is responsive on mobile devices. It’s useless to a user if they can’t access the information on their mobile.

Making data heavy pieces mobile ready can sometimes be a difficult task, but just keep asking yourself - what is the least amount of information I can show my audience whilst still giving them the whole picture?

So, next time you’re thinking about creating an infographic, take a step back. Might there be a better way?

Information design is in a new golden age and with so many inspiring examples out there’s no excuse not to support your brand with content marketing that matters.

Need to be more effective at planning your content marketing strategy? Download the Blueclaw Content Marketing Planner and relax: