September 25, 2026
I have spent a lot of time working with visual communication. Because of that, when I look at a poster, social media graphic, presentation, or website, I notice visual problems quickly.
The spacing feels wrong. The hierarchy is weak. There are too many fonts. The image is fighting with the text.
Those things still matter to me.
But lately I have been noticing a problem that Photoshop cannot fix: sometimes the message itself is unclear.
I used to reach for the design first
When I have information to communicate, my natural instinct is visual.
I start imagining where the title will go, what kind of image could work, and how the information should be arranged. That is useful because design is part of my work.
The problem comes when I begin designing before I have decided what the main message actually is.
Then I can spend twenty minutes moving things around without solving anything.
The layout changes. The confusion stays.
Writing has exposed that weakness
Studying communication in English has made this more obvious to me.
Recently, I have been working on scripts, social media posts, ledes, press releases, and headlines. Those assignments do not let me hide behind a good layout. If the sentence is weak, it is sitting there on the page.
Sometimes I read something I wrote and realize I took three sentences to say what I could have said in one.
That is slightly frustrating because editing an image feels more familiar to me than cutting my own words. I hesitate. Maybe that sentence is useful. Maybe the reader needs that explanation.
Then I remove it and realize the paragraph is better.
Design and writing have the same basic problem
The more I work with both, the more similar they seem.
In design, hierarchy tells the eye where to go first.
In writing, the order of information does something similar. A headline makes a promise. A lede tells me why I should continue. The next paragraphs give me what I need in an order that makes sense.
Neither one works well when everything competes for attention.
This has changed a small part of my process. Before opening the design software, I am trying to ask one question first: What exactly am I trying to say?
I do not always have a clean answer immediately. Sometimes I still start designing too early.
But I notice it sooner now. And that saves me from trying to solve a writing problem by moving text boxes around.
