Many readers of my blog and my most recent book Cashing in with Content: How Innovative Marketers use Digital Information to turn Browsers into Buyers know that I insist (and often rant incessantly) about content as the most important aspect of a Web site, ebook, white paper, newsletter and the like. I really hate seeing cool deign with nothing of substance in the way of content behind it.
But I do have to admit that I don't know a lot about design and decided to learn. Robert C. Parker's Design to Sell provided me a terrific overview of how to use design as a competitive asset. While the book has a focus about using Microsoft Publisher to plan, write, and design great marketing pieces, the chapters in the front of the book gave me the grounding I needed.
One of the reasons that I chose this book is that Parker understands marketing and content and how to use design in concert with goals. I didn’t want to read a book that was just focused on pretty stuff – I wanted to know how design is an important component to enhancing the great content that is created in newsletters, white papers, ebooks, Web sites and so on.
Check out Parker’s companion blog to his book. Is this an awesome deign or what?
