Content design Guides, templates and articles
Guides, templates and articles about content design, government communications, digital experience with a few case studies thrown in for fun.
How to measure the impact of content design in Australian government
How to measure content design impact in Australian government: four practical metrics that match how agencies fund the work and report on its delivery outcomes.
PDF/UA (ISO 14289) is the standard for accessible PDFs. Most government PDFs do not meet it.
PDF/UA (ISO 14289) is the international standard for accessible PDFs. Most Australian government PDFs do not meet it. The fix is governance, not better tooling.
AI prompt pack for government content teams
Eight working prompts for Australian government content design tasks: plain language rewrites, error messages, alt text, and skim-readability. Free download.
AS ISO 24495 plain language is now an Australian Standard. Use it as a governance lever.
AS ISO 24495.1:2024 makes plain language a citable Australian Standard. Use it in your content governance framework, your next tender, or in your audit reports.
Evaluation is a practice. Treat it like one.
Evaluation is a practice, not a report. Like content design, it fails when bolted on at the end. Design for evaluation from day one. Methodology cannot save it.
Content engineering: the discipline content designers should know about
Content engineering is the discipline that sits between content design and software engineering. Most Australian government CMS and AI projects fail without it.
Taxonomy for content designers: what to know before tagging a single page
Taxonomy on Australian government websites is a content design decision, not a records job. Content designers must own the words users search and filter by.
Responsible AI use in government content isn't a policy question. It's a workflow question.
Responsible AI use in government content is a daily workflow question, not a policy question. Here's what it looks like at the desk where the content gets made.
What 'boring' content actually is, and why it's the right answer for government
Boring content isn't dull. It's predictable, calm and trustworthy. For government, regulated and high-stakes audiences, that's a feature.
FAQ pages are usually poor content design. AI does not change that.
FAQ pages feel productive to build, but usually signal a content design problem. Here's why they fall short, what AI changes about them, and what to do instead.
What is content design? It's not copywriting, and the difference matter.
Content design is not copywriting. It's the discipline of structuring content so people can find it, understand it, and act. Here's what that means in practice.
Information architecture on government websites is a governance problem, not a design problem
Information architecture on Australian government websites need help. It is a governance problem, not a design problem. Here is what that means in practice.
The first conversation in content design is not about content
Stakeholders are attached to their content. In government content design, the first move is always the conversation, not the rewrite. Here's the right sequence.