For years, we’ve been spending millions of dollars on strategy and research, user experience design, visual design, and technical platforms. In other words, we’ve invested in everything we need to build the online vehicles for our content.

And yet, strangely, it’s the content that gets left until the last minute. It’s the main reason projects are delayed or even abandoned. It’s an afterthought, a nuisance.

Why? Because most of us haven’t yet realized that we’re actually in the publishing business.

… But here’s the deal. The moment you launch a website, you’re a publisher. The moment you begin a blog, send an email, participate in social media, build a widget, even show up in search engine results… you are a publisher.

Publishers plan far in advance which content they will create. They have established, measurable processes in place. They invest in teams of professionals to create and care for content. They would never think of starting with design and then cramming content in at the last minute.

Like it or not, this is your job now. Web audiences demand useful, usable content. If you don’t deliver, they will leave. And in order to deliver, you need to make content a priority. You need to think like a publisher.

Open letter from a Distressed Bookseller

Jim Carty, Destroyer of Local Businesses?

I find the debate fascinating. I only have two things to add to the discussion: 1) my textbook buying experience at Shaman Drum was miserable, but not exceptionally so; 2) I wonder whether this is less a case of capitalism’s “creative destruction” than it is a case of a small business that relied too heavily on a single revenue stream.

McCloud’s Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art is one of the most influential books I’ve read—it’s a must-read for any designer.

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction

But unless the building is oriented toward the outside, which surrounds it, as carefully and positively as toward its inside, the space around the building will be useless and blank—with the direct effect, in the long run, that the building will be socially isolated, because you have to cross a no-man’s land to get to it.

Look, for example, at this machine age slab of steel and glass. You cannot approach it anywhere except at its entrance—because the space around it is not made for people.

I couldn’t help but think of the “Skip Intro” splash page as the realization of a building’s edge on the web.

Rather, her process was simple enough to resonate with anyone on a Web team. And perhaps more importantly, it would help connect Web teams to other core parts of their organizations who were skeptical of spending even another cent on their web sites.

In the end, using Indi’s process, we were able to convince teams that we weren’t researching all the creativity out of their projects. We were researching the risk out. And no matter how the industry is faring, that’s a story people want to hear.

Taken from Jeffrey Veen’s forward to Indi Young’s new book, Mental Models. I love the cover design.