Resources for content design

Here is a list of books and free online resources that I’ve hand-picked for beginners, to help you broaden and build your content design skills. It’s divided into sections for key skills. 

Not sure where to begin? Check the Quick start section. 

Key

📖 Books
🎓 Practical tasks and courses
💻 Articles and videos
🔧 Tools
⏫ Intermediate resources for those with a little experience

Contents

Quick start

Shortcuts to a few of the resources below, for those who are completely new to content design.

🎓 Getting started in user experience
A free, 41-minute course for beginners, with a broad introduction to the world of UX.

💻 Microcopy 101 – Design Lab
A run through of the end-to-end process behind creating microcopy (watch out for the pop ups!)

💻 Guidelines for writing in Plain English – Plain English Campaign
My go-to, solid-gold guidelines on how to write absolutely anything.

🎓 Daily UX writing challenge
A 15-day writing challenge with a new prompt emailed to your inbox daily.

💻 Content-first design – Balsamiq
A step-by-step approach to content-first design, to ensure we create the best user experiences.

💻 How people read online – NN Group
A fantastic summary of 13 years of eye-tracking research, showing how people consume content on the web, with links to explain the different types of gaze patterns that we use to inform our content design (for example, layer cake, F-pattern, and more).

💻 Breaking into content design – Working in content
A series of free talks and videos about breaking into the world of content design

UX writing and microcopy

💻 Microcopy 101 – Design Lab
A run through of the end-to-end process behind creating microcopy (watch out for the pop ups!)

🎓 Daily UX writing challenge
A 15-day writing challenge with a new prompt emailed to your inbox daily.

🎓 Random microcopy prompt generator 
A fun way of practising your UX writing skills and building a portfolio of examples.

💻 Material Design’s guide to writing 
Google’s design language and rules for how to write for their own products.

💻 UI Copy: UX Guidelines for Command Names and Keyboard Shortcuts – NN Group
NN Group’s guidelines on how to write clear, succinct UI copy.

💻 The four dimensions of tone of voice – NN Group
How to create, use and analyse tone of voice.

Content design and content strategy

💻 Design pattern guidelines – NN Group 
A round up of guidelines for design patterns for many UI elements, from forms to menus, search and more.

💻 Content-first design – Balsamiq
A step-by-step approach to content-first design, to ensure we create the best user experiences.

💻 How to use wireframes for content modelling – Balsamiq
A step-by-step guide to content modelling, part of a content-first design approach.

🔧 Whimsical 
My favourite free tool for content-first design and easy wireframing.

🎓 UX Foundations – Content strategy 
A free LinkedIn course that covers the basics of content strategy for the web and digital products.

📖 Strategic writing for UX – Torrey Podmajersky
A helpful book that examines content strategy, patterns and tone in UX writing.

⏫🎓 UX foundations – Information architecture
A free introduction to information architecture from LinkedIn.

Readability and accessibility

🔧 Hemingway editor 
A very useful tool for improving the readability of your writing. I recommend writing your work in another space first and then pasting it into Hemingway to check, as there is no option to save your progress.

💻 Guidelines for writing in Plain English – Plain English Campaign
My go-to, solid-gold guidelines on how to write absolutely anything.

💻 How people read online – NN Group
A fantastic summary of 13 years of eye-tracking research, showing how people consume content on the web, with links to explain the different types of gaze patterns that we use to inform our content design (for example, layer cake, F-pattern, and more).

💻 Reading content on mobile devices – NN Group
Research into how users consume content differently on mobile devices compared to the web.

💻 Interface copy impacts decision making  – NN Group
Exploring choice architecture, emotional framing, and how words impact decisions.

💻 Inverted pyramid – writing for comprehension  – NN Group
Guidelines for how to write longer-form content (such as help articles) by leading with the most important information first.

Testing 

💻 Content testing – Intuit
An excellent guide on how to test almost any type of content, including information architecture.

🎓 UX Foundations – Usability testing
A free LinkedIn course for beginners that introduces usability testing.

UX design

🎓 Getting started in User Experience
A free, 41-minute course for beginners with a broad introduction to the world of UX.

💻 A beginners guide to user journey mapping – Nick Babich, UX Planet
A broad overview of user journey mapping.

⏫💻 Mapping in discovery – NN Group
An overview of three different methods of mapping problem spaces.

📖 UX for Dummies – Chestnut and Nichols
A well-rounded look into everything across the UX design lifecycle, including content strategy.

⏫📖 Laws of UX – Jon Yablonski
For those already familiar with basic UX principles – this book applies psychological principles to UX and product design. 

Design thinking and systems thinking

💻 Design thinking: Study Guide – NN Group
A complete round-up of introductory articles to design thinking.

⏫💻 Empathy mapping – NN Group
A thorough introduction to empathy mapping and how we use it in UX and content design.

⏫💻 Systems thinking for designers – Fjord 
A thorough introduction to systems thinking, its overlap with design thinking, and its importance to designers.

⏫💻 Why designers should find the balance between systems and design thinking – Tyler La
An article exploring the pros and cons of both design thinking and systems thinking and when to use them.

Working with others

🔧 Figma
The main tool I use at work for collaborating with other designers and engineers. You can create everything from workshops to high-fidelity designs that are ready to hand over to engineers. Some companies may use Sketch, but Figma is a new standard.

🎓 Introduction to Figma basics 
A free LinkedIn course for absolute beginners. I also recommend “Figma: handing off to developers” and “Figma for UX Design” if you’re already familiar with the basics.

💻 How and when to work with a content designer – Natalie Rohrer, HubSpot
A great article for product designers and managers, engineers and more on how to work effectively with a content designer.

⏫📖 Articulating design decisions – Tom Greever
A guide to working with stakeholders and cross-department colleagues, for UX design professionals.