Content design and social linguistics. Candi Williams speaking at Config 2023

Very please to have found this brilliant talk via the Plain English Weekly newsletter. It ties the themes of my last post about language into the design world, with the best explainer and set of examples for the discipline of content design that I’ve ever seen.

In particular, from around 14 to 22 minutes, Candi builds on how subtle word choice can evoke, hide, or highlight the enormously important meaning of the language we use.

Peoples identities are not “edge cases”. We can’t be truly human-centred without including all humans.

Candi Williams

I love to this example showing GOV.UK without content.

A still image from a talk given by Candi Williams about content design. Candi is shown standing next to the front page of the GOV.UK website with all words removed, which results in just a few empty black and blue boxes

Such a succinct way to illustrate the role of content design.