Colorful Abstract Photo 3
Illustration by Nghi Huynh, xolve branding
“Hey, is there any way for designers to write?” – my close designer friend asked.
“Endless. And more.” – I answered with great confidence.

For that isn’t the first time I’ve received such a question. The misconception that a creative person can only perform what their job title tells them, like designers are only good at designing and writers can’t travel beyond their world of stories, have been proven to be an outdated norm. In today’s fast-paced creative setting, beside a specific set of skills every practitioner should own to mark their name, the rest likely serves as universal and transferable skills for all of us. Regardless of our occupation or interest, the ability to write and articulate our thoughts through the use of words, are highly sought after. 

With the rising demand at hand, xolve team has returned to shed light on the matter. We’ve crafted an easy and practical step-to-step guide for designers to slowly work on their writing, storytelling and presenting skills altogether. 

Because every piece of good work needs great selling, and great selling starts with words. Let’s dive in the tips below to see how you can take steps toward that goal in the coming days. 

1. Get your thoughts out

First and foremost, we need to address the real aching problem here. Too often it’s not you not having any thought to form a solid explanation or story, it’s usually the other way around. You just have many thoughts bouncing in mind, which subsequently distract you from the real important things you initially want to build on. 

The best way to view your thoughts is to get them off your mind, far from the screen and right onto papers. 

Write each thing you come up with on a paper and stick it on a board. Once you literally put it all out, you’ll see a big picture and have a better guess of the idea of what could be expanded to a well-grounded direction and what’s just a one-off, little spark of the moment. From that crucial first step, you now have some points you want to focus on through the rest of design development. 

2. Build a flow

A big point by itself could sometimes hinder you in ways you’re not entirely aware of. That said, after you’ve picked out your main points, it’s time to build a flow out of it. 

A flow helps balancing both logical and emotional interests, while reminding you of touch points that need more explanation for better understanding.

Take a look at your board of thoughts again and choose which one falls under the same idea, though not strong enough on its own, does a wonderful job at informing your chosen ones. From that, the more specific executions like fonts, color scheme and visual references can smoothly come in and help you cave out an organized stream of design solutions. 

In constructing a flow, have your main points pinned on top and supporting ones lying under. The combination will work wonders at explaining, exciting and elevating the whole thing for you and your audience.

3. Form a narrative

If a flow is a backbone, then a narrative is your idea’s best outfit. Breathe an enchanting narrative into your ideas right from the ground up. Travel down your memory lane of brainstorming and recall what inspired you to think of this piece in the first place. 

What’s the underlying desire and behavior of the targeted audience and your very own? What’s your point of view and reaction towards it? And why did you choose to pave a new path, close and far away from the client’s traveled road? 

Your own personal stories are the best persuasion there could ever be. 

For a moment of truth, the work is only as good as the person doing it. The clients or audience could have seen and chosen many other design works out there, yet they come to you. It’s time you let them know what they are here for and earn their decision. 

Because not everyone will have first-hand design knowledge and experience like us creative practitioners do, but all have stories they fall for and people they wanna do business with. And how you get from where you are to where you could possibly be in the audience’s heart and mind, lie entirely in the narrative you wrap your work around.

Colorful Abstract Photo 2
Illustration by Nghi Huynh, xolve branding

4. Present to yourself

Last step, as subjective as it sounds, kindly present to yourself even though you’re probably the person understanding what you’re doing the most inside out. For the simple reason, you need to give yourself a final go-get-it confirmation before it actually heads to the whole team or the client’s mailbox.

If you feel good presenting your ideas to yourself, with complete confidence, smooth delivery, no pausing, stuttering or reference-showing and viewer-guessing moments every then in between, then you’ll feel good sharing it with anyone out there.

The fear starts within you. And in all fairness, the security should all come from you as well.  

That last advice just wraps up our step-to-step guide for now. As reality kicks in, we all know overcoming any fear, or such fear, can’t just be an overnight work. It takes the will to practice and so much practice itself to achieve a highly coveted skill. But nothing is ever too far fetched once you’ve set your mind to it.

There’s a writer in anyone, because the gift of writing isn’t just exclusively meant for those who go by its name.

Give yourself time and space to grow above the widely whispered stereotype of designers not being able to articulate their thoughts through writings. Because that’s just a myth, and you’ve got our guide to put all that messing fuss behind.