Copy Points

I recently saw a post on reddit where the person who submitted the article had put a great deal of time and effort (very clearly, by the quality of the end product) into designing his graphic.

There was just one problem with it: The copy it was filled with was entirely incomprehensible. It might as well have been lorem ipsum.

Good design does a great job of pulling one into it, and guiding them around it. This holds true with any piece of design, be it on paper, the layout of a store, the packaging of a product, and so on. However, what it can't do is fake the funk. That is to say, if what you're bringing the observer into is useless, pointless or incomprehensible, the greatest design in the world won't help it.

I saw something similar recently with a guy who went around his neighborhood redesigning ads and fliers he found on the street. The results, while very nice looking, took a hard step backward in terms of readability and legibility. Though this is more a balance between good design and comprehensibility, the message is still the same: if it ain't readable, no one's going to read it.

It doesn't hurt designers to learn a thing or two about how to write a sentence. It's surprised me how many designers I've come across who couldn't formulate a single correct sentence, and yet our job, quite often, is to work with letters and words, to make them read most effectively.

If you're interested in upping your game at all, I'd suggest reading through some of these sites, or using them as resources. The more you use them, the less you'll have to use them. Grammar really doesn't change that much, so it's a nice skill to learn, and it will keep unnecessary problems from slipping through, making your projects that much stronger.

Resources

Grammar tricks
Commonly misspelled words
How to Write in AP Style (By the way, AP style should be your style of choice)
How to Edit Copy and Influence People Great for working with sometimes-tough clients