How do you train yourself and others on content design and format?

As stated, "accessibility, usability, and readability" are the keys. Simple and concise design is always best for transmitting information. My personal approach is adapted from Coco Chanel... “Before you publish a training, look through it and take one non-essential design element away.”

When you create content like articles, videos, or social media posts, how you design and format it is like wrapping a gift. Well-designed and well-formatted content is like the nicely wrapped gift – it catches people's attention, helps them understand what you're saying, encourages them to take action (like sharing or buying), and makes them trust you more. But if your content is messy, hard to read, or looks unprofessional, it's like giving a poorly wrapped gift – it confuses, frustrates, or even annoys your audience. They might not bother with it, and it could hurt how well your content does on websites or social media.

Content design is synonymous to, 'beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.' Human beings love visually appealing stuff. Your content could be a gem but because it's not appealing, users will ignore it. For instance, chunk text is an eyesore. For any reader, once your eyes spots a large chunk of text they get exasperated. Take the reader through your story line by line. Thought by thought. A thought/idea in each sentence. And in the most basic English you can master. For them to understand.

I believe that it’s important to develop your own style and approach to content design and format by consuming other content from lots of different sources. If you need new formats for your written content, study the articles that already perform well within your subject matter or key terms. That can give you inspiration for how to shape your own. As with other media like video or podcasts, learning from what else is out there and shaping that around your content will give you good insights for how to establish a format.

To the advice above, I would add it helps to cultivate a couple of other key skills, which are easy to overlook because they're super subjective and difficult to teach. One is the ability to pay attention to one's own experiences and feelings, and then to put your little experiences into words. Combined with this is the ability to forget what you know and approach an interaction or content fresh, as if you're seeing it for the first time. How does it strike you? What stands out? Does what seemed important the first time, still seem important? Following along this line, is another habit and that is not taking your own experience too seriously. Get perspective from others whose opinion you trust.

When it comes to training others, it's essential to start with the fundamentals. We discuss the key principles of content design and format - clarity, consistency, and audience-centricity. We encourage team members to ask questions and provide a safe space for experimentation. Collaborative workshops, where everyone can share their insights and feedback, have proven incredibly effective.

To apply content design and format professionally, you begin with planning, where you define objectives, understand your audience, and conduct research to inform your content strategy. The creation phase follows, where you create and edit your content while choosing the right style and media for effective presentation. Then, in the reviewing stage, you assess content quality, consistency, and usability, incorporating feedback from stakeholders to refine it. Finally, in the publishing stage, you distribute the content for accessibility and visibility, continuously monitoring and measuring its performance and impact. These steps collectively ensure that your content meets professional standards and maximizes its effectiveness.