When coming up with a design or a piece of writing one must take into consideration the many different views that the observers and readers will have. To help with the design and writing processes there are guidelines that can be followed to clean up the clutter of the initial group of ideas to better refine and polish the work.

As many designers learn, ‘commodity, firmness, and delight’ are key terms that aid in the formation of a design and can also be accommodated for the writing process. Commodity is the utility of the design or writing. This is a design’s use as a bus shelter or the moral of a children’s story. Firmness is the structure which represents how well a design holds though the elements and how a story flows from scene to scene. And delight is how pleasing the works are to the audience through the eyes and through the mind.

I had this in mind a few weeks ago during a meeting with the leaders of a new nonprofit organization. They were asking me for feedback on their mission statement and the way their website was organized. While their purpose was noble, I was struggling to really understand what they did. To put it bluntly, their design was horrid.

It saddened me to hear that they “didn’t have time to focus on design” because they were a nonprofit. Since when was design just a luxury? Some new nonprofit organizations have proven that design can be THE core strategy for success. The best example that comes to mind is Charity Water. As one of the only nonprofits I know that employs a full-time designer as a senior leader of the organization, Charity Water has raised a tremendous amount of money and attention for a very worthy cause: clean water where it is needed most. I encourage you to take a few minutes to review Charity Water’s website, and you will see what I mean. While there are many nonprofit organizations with a similar cause, Charity Water has a competitive advantage: design. …

Whether you admit it or not, your product or service will only succeed if people are engaged by it. Design is a means to that engagement. Reconsider your emphasis and investment in great design as a core part of your business.

It’s the same with the authors or the external designers we decide to work with on books. Editing is like being a Creative Director, it only works if your intervention is wanted and respected, so we’d only want to work with people who felt that our editorial or design interventions were welcome. If we were consonantly at war with an author or a designer then it probably wouldn’t be the sort of book we’d want to publish—although a bit of creative friction can often help reach a deeper and richer outcome.

2) Design isn’t an analytical process. Creativity requires taking leaps and risks, success requires managing those risks perfectly.

3) Have a mantra. Have a few words you can say to yourself over and over that captures what yu want to accomplish in a design. Then make it a point to stop every few days and ask yourself, ‘does the design live up to the mantra?’

4) Always look at least one layer out from the design problem. When you’re drawing your designs, always put them in context. What room is the person in? What else is there? It might just force you to be a better sketcher, but it will often give you insight into issues and opportunities you’d otherwise miss.

5) Fidelity matters: Don’t try to be too polished or too rough, be where you are in the process. If you don’t have a good sense of what’s right, find a mentor who can review your work from that perspective. Otherwise, no matter how great your idea is, it’ll get lost in the silly stuff.