Presence over productivity.

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Maintaining your creativity.

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Writing is design.

Writing is design. The toolbox is the only difference.

Designers use typography. Color. Texture. Size.
Writers use tone. Punctuation. Allusion. Diction.

Different tools, same objective. You want a viewer to perceive a product or brand a certain way. So you use what’s in your palette to present it that way.

Want a viewer’s attention on a particular point? Lead it there.

Designers direct the eye and the mind with layout. We use syntax.

A different typeface can vary the mood. So can diction. (Consider “buy” vs “purchase” vs “get”. Similar meanings, different feel.)

What designers do with negative space, we do with subtext. And on and on.

Good writing is design because, done well, it communicates intrinsically as well as extrinsically. You can feel it. Yet too often, companies are segregating their writers and designers. Kicking off projects separately. Going back to siloing the disciplines.

This often happens for valid reasons. Different skill pipelines. Varied review cycles. The sheer number of assets in a scaled, production-heavy org. But the result can be work that looks “branded,” but sounds generic. Or worse, is mismatched with the design and feels disjointed.

It’s true that people read less nowadays. But the less words there are remaining, the more crucial it is to keep the right ones. In the right order. Words that say what you want to say, yes. But that also FEEL the way you want them to feel. Words that either complement the design – adding to the refinement in that delicate, considered layout – or apply deliberate, purposeful tension. Making it pop. 

So, writers: lay out those words like the elements they are. Break out your thesaurus. Sweat the sentence structure. Put the most important idea at the end of the sentence. Polish your paragraphs. Stick the landing.

Always make sure you and your design partner are clear and intentional about the thing you’re creating.

And never, ever, let anyone call it “type”. 

Voice is not creative direction.

First thing I learned on the job at PayPal? This is different.

Until I took this job, a lot of my career was about creative direction. That's all about distinction. What's the idea? How can we say it differently? How many ways can we vary it up? Make every expression unique, with its own take on the key message.

As Head of Voice, the game is different. What are our brand principles? Are they reflected consistently across every surface, every time we’re saying something? And, crucially, how do we set the table for teams to replicate those principles across the org? Make sure we always “feel like us” on the website. In the app. In an email, then another. Then 6 more.

That’s not making rules. It’s giving guidance. Through playbooks, messaging hierarchies, frameworks.

One’s left brain. One's right. Both matter.
Distinction without discipline, and you’re a kite without a string.
Too many rules and you stifle creativity, effectively taking the pen away from your most valuable creators. Telling them what to say, how to say it.

When I started out in Voice I mostly had a right brain. As I developed the left, I quickly realized there's power in empowering others. Building the tools that let teams run and make good things.

Anyway, now I do both. And sometimes my head hurts.