What should come first when you're creating a piece of marketing collateral?

The copy or the design?

It's one of those questions nobody seems to have a straight answer to. A classic chicken and egg conundrum.

But here's the thing.

What if this wasn't the question you should be focusing on?

What if the more important thing was that, regardless of who took the lead, the finished product's copy and design worked together to make the message as compelling as it can possibly be?

The great debate: should copy or design come first?

First things first, it's worth noting that we're not saying it doesn't matter whether you start with the copy or the design. But, this is mainly a practical consideration.

At the risk of sounding like a well-worn cliché, what makes most sense depends on the situation. Many times, nailing the copy first is the way to go (and no, we're not saying this just because we've got skin in the game). Other times, it may be a good idea to start with the design.

When a piece is content-heavy — a brochure, white paper, flyer, or advertorial, for instance — it's best to start with the copy. This is because, while you can revise copy in a Word or Google document fairly easily, revising copy in a design mockup requires more work. The designer may have to update source files, tweak the mockup, or even rethink the layout completely (if the copy needs major changes).

Aside from being inefficient and dragging out the process, it'll also make for a very unhappy designer.

The opposite is true if a piece of marketing collateral isn't going to have too much copy, for whatever reason. Here, it makes sense to start with the design, because the visuals will be doing the heavy lifting.

Design supports copy and copy supports design

Whether you start with copy or design may be down to practical considerations. But, regardless of which one leads, both have an important role to play.

Consider this iconic Araldite billboard:

The design sells it before you've read a single word. And the copy would make no sense without the visual.

That said, the single line of copy is another opportunity to bring out Araldite's main benefit — it's really strong glue. It also enhances the overall effect by adding a dash of humour, which makes the billboard more striking and memorable.

Similarly, in this ad for the VW Beetle, every body part is a different colour. This reinforces the copy's message that it's easy to find a replacement for any VW part. Which means you'll be back behind the wheel in no time without having to pay through the nose for repairs.

Even in projects that are all about the copy — blog posts or white papers, for instance — good design makes a huge difference.

Font choice, font size, paragraph length, and other formatting choices all affect whether people will be drawn in or get put off because they find the copy too hard to read. A study also suggests that graphs and other visuals can make copy up to 43% more persuasive.

How copywriters and designers can work better together

Clearly, the finished product is much stronger when the copy and design are in sync.

But how can copywriters and designers create an environment that makes it easier for them to collaborate?

Get together from the start

Whether a project is going to be copy-led or design-led, it pays for the copywriter and the designer to work together from the off.

Design and copywriting may be different disciplines, but the skills are complementary. So even something as simple as a read-through of the brief and a quick brainstorm can get the juices flowing and plant the seeds of ideas that neither would've come up with on their own.

More importantly, nobody can do their job in a vacuum.

A designer can't create a usable mockup or wireframe without knowing how much copy is needed and how it's going to be structured. And a copywriter can't crank out a bunch of big chunky paragraphs and leave it at that.

Having this discussion before the work starts ensures everyone understands the requirements so the project runs more smoothly.

Don't get territorial

In the 1990s, well before actor Bryan Cranston became Heisenberg, he made a guest appearance as a dentist on the sitcom Seinfeld.

In his autobiography, Cranston remembers that, right before he filmed his scene, one of the stage hands suggested it would be funny if he pretended to take a hit of laughing gas. Cranston went for it. And it worked so well that Jerry Seinfeld — who apparently isn't quick to laugh — was in fits.

The moral of the story, concludes Cranston, is that you never know where a great idea will come from.

This holds true just as much in marketing as it does in acting.

Nobody has the monopoly on good ideas. Just because a copywriter works with words, it doesn't mean their design ideas aren't valid. Similarly, the designer could come up with the perfect tagline.

Case in point, it was art director Helmut Krone who came up with 'Think Small' — the tagline of the iconic VW Beetle campaign.

Make each other's lives easier

UX expert Laura Parker recommends sending copy to designers in a text file, in Pages, or as Google doc. Anything but Microsoft Word.

"Most designers don't use Microsoft Word," she says. So sending the copy in this format is just going to make their life difficult unnecessarily.

Similarly, if you're a designer, it helps to bear in mind that the copywriter may not be familiar with your favourite wireframing tool.

More to the point, discuss the delivery schedule at the outset. Design and copy both come with deadlines, and nothing kills creativity like time pressure. So make sure you set key milestones, communicate regularly, and leave each other enough time to do your thing.