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Sophie TahranAs the field of content design grows and matures, so too do the organizations in which content designers practice.
At Condé Nast – the publisher of iconic brands like The New Yorker, WIRED, and Vogue – Sophie Tahran has built content-design orgs from one-person units to company-spanning teams.
Her latest work has been informed by original research that she conducted to learn more about how other companies design and manage their content-design organizations.
We talked about:
- her work as a design director at Condé Nast
- the evolution and growth of the content-design profession over the past 10 years
- her research on org design for content-design organizations
- the trends and models that emerged in her research
- one of the key findings of her research: the importance of have a community of craft
- the Condé Nast multi-brand design system
- how they incorporate content design into their design systems
- how difficult it remains to adequately staff content-design teams
- what she discovered in her research about industry ratios of content designers to product designers
- the benefits of “working at a place where everyone really understands the value of excellent writing as a craft”
- the differences between centralized, embedded, clustered, and other content-design organization practices
Sophie’s bio
Sophie Tahran is a Director of Design at Condé Nast. After establishing content design as a discipline at The New Yorker, she built out a team of content designers across Vogue, Architectural Digest, Bon Appetit, and more publications before moving into design leadership.
Connect with Sophie online
Video
Here’s the video version of our conversation:
Podcast intro transcript
This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 177. As the field of content design has grown and matured, the design of the organizations in which content designers’ work has also become more complex and interesting. In her role as a design director at the big publisher Condé Nast, Sophie Tahran has had to figure out the best way to design her content-design organization to serve Condé Nast’s many brands. Part of her process was conducting original research to discover how others had organized their content-design teams.
Interview transcript
Larry:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Episode number 177 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show Sophie Tahran. Sophie is a design director at Condé Nast, the big magazine publisher based in New York. Well, I guess do you even say magazine publisher anymore? Anyhow, welcome Sophie. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you’re up to these days.
Sophie:
Yes, thanks so much, Larry. I’m so excited to be here. Yeah, I am speaking to you live from New York City in Manhattan. This is Condé’s New York US headquarters. We also have locations in London, India, really all over the world. But I have been here for coming up on five years, which is wild to think about, was the very first UX writer as we called ourselves when I first started here, focused on The New Yorker and have since built out the content design team, which I’m really, really excited about in terms of the work that we’ve been doing. And have lately been stepping into a bit more of a design leadership position. So I’m now looking at it and really helping push forward the product design work, including content design across really all of our brands. The New Yorker, Vogue, our Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, Vanity Fair, WIRED, the list goes on.
Larry:
That’s such an impressive list. And I was a magazine journalism college magazine major in college, so in journalism school, so I’m totally envious of all those brands. But hey, I want to talk about, you just mentioned that you were the first, and you’ve grown this, you’ve grown the content design team, and now you’ve advanced into a more general design leadership position. But that’s sort of almost a microcosm of what’s happened overall in the profession over the last say 10 years because 10 years ago you’re in the Bay Area, everybody is a content design team of one.
Sophie:
Yes.
Larry:
Can you talk a little bit about the history you’ve seen unfold over the last 10 years?
Sophie:
Absolutely. It’s really amazing to think about. I used to go to the UX Writer Meetups in San Francisco, which is really where I learned almost everything that I know, where I’d chat with the folks on the Dropbox product design team or content design team, Pinterest, Uber. I was at Lyft at the time, really just trying to learn from people live at meetups because there weren’t books. There were medium articles written by John Santo back in the day that we were all learning from and excited about. But it has grown so much over the course of the past few years. Yeah, I guess 10 years now, which is wild to think about, where we have books, we have entire conferences dedicated to what we do. There are so many newsletters, so much content out there about content design that I no longer have to point people toward one medium article to learn about what we could possibly do in this discipline.
Larry:
That’s right. And one of the things, I love the outgrowth of that is that we’ve got to the point in this profession, where you can go out and do research about how people organize these teams. You did some research that you reported on at Button, but tell me a little bit about that research that you did, because I know it sounds like it’s an ongoing thing too. You’re still talking to folks, or?
Sophie:
Yes, yes. So in building out a team at Condé Nast, I found that I felt like I was making things up a lot of the time. I was like, this feels right, I know that I want to have a centralized team, at least at this point in time, this is what we need. But I’m hearing that other people are decentralized, or I’m not really sure how I should be attributing work to each one of our content designers, or making sure that we all understand what we’re responsible for and that our partners understand who they should go to for what. And so I was really curious to dig into org design for content design, knowing that I was definitely not the end-all-be-all expert on the topic. I wanted to get a sense of what was actually happening across the industry. So I sent out a survey to get a pulse check on how teams were organizing themselves, depending on how big the company is, how big their content design team was, how established or mature their content design practice was.
Sophie:
So I sent out a survey, I got, I think it was 25 to 30 responses to start, and that was when I shared the first phase of results at Button’s Leadership Program this past year. But was really curious to get much more information and get a better snapshot across the industry from all different types of teams outside of just those that might be participating in Button’s Leadership Program. So I’ve continued to send out the survey circulating, I think we’re up to around 80 responses at this point. And I’ve seen that we’ve captured many more teams of one, many more teams that are much more global or international in nature, folks that are working as contractors, or freelancers who are content designers. So a much more nuanced look at all of the different ways that we are establishing this practice.
Larry:
Interesting. And one of the things about it, you showed me some of this research last month when we talked to prepare for this. And one of the things that struck me was how, I don’t know if you set out to do this in your methodology, but there was like six or eight or 10 in each of small, medium to size businesses. You had a number of different, what you called shapes and states of teams. Tell me a little bit about how that, just the numbers behind that research or the numbers that emerged from that research, I guess.
Sophie:
Yes. So there were some very clear trends within the research. So most of the teams that I had respond to the survey are functioning content design teams within a product design org at this point. So it’s rare to see content designers sitting in marketing at this point. It’s also more common to be a centralized team. But interestingly, as teams got bigger, or more established, I started seeing a few more decentralized structures where each content designer is maybe reporting up to a different manager as opposed to one centralized head of content design. But it really kind of depends on the needs of the teams. A lot of teams had a mix of structures, depending on what each initiative or area of the business needed. So maybe a principal content designer could be reporting to a head of design, whereas there’s more of a centralized content design practice in another area of the business for senior or mid-level content designers.
Sophie:
It really kind of ran the gamut. The really most interesting piece of it to me was pulling out the pros and cons of each of these different ways of organizing ourselves. And there really isn’t a clear winner-takes-all approach to how our teams are organized. There are some common trends when it comes to where content designers live within different product design orgs. Some of us are embedded where one content designer is attributed and fully embedded in one product area, or area of the business. Some of us use agency models. There was a fun one that I’m calling a swarm model where all of the content designers focus on one problem or one possible scope of work together to take the two heads are better than one approach. We have many teams of one. We really are organizing ourselves in a lot of different ways and there are some similarities, but it really depends on the need of the team at that point in time.
Larry:
That’s right. You could be a consultant because the answer in that world is always, it depends. But there’s probably legit reasons for everything from company culture to size to nature of the product, the nature of the staff, the folks you have to work with.
Sophie:
Yes.
Larry:
It makes sense that that would be all over the map like that.
Sophie:
And I would say, and just to add on one more point there, I would say the big outstanding piece there was the community of craft. And that’s a phrase that, I don’t know if it was maybe Chelsea Larson that coined that probably I’ve borrowed a lot of those sorts of things from her. But one of the really common variables was how well-established, or how mature the team’s community of craft is. And when I say that, I mean do you have documented ways of working for how a content designer should be partnering with a product designer? Do you have resources that people across the company can refer to when it comes to establishing what sort of voice a product should take on, or how they should be requesting, work or which sorts of practices you should expect in Figma? The better formulated your community of craft is the less necessary it feels to have any one specific way of working. The most important thing is establishing that community of craft and those ways of working early on so that content designers can really dig into the work at hand.
Larry:
That’s right. And some places I know are beginning to ensconce that sort of the wisdom that emerges from those communities as docs that go with the design system or just within the content design team. Do you have anything like that at Condé Nast or?
Sophie:
Yes. So across Condé, I think this is really interesting, we have a design system that really spans all of our different brands. And so this is a really kind of common central tension of all of the work that we do where we have shared capabilities. For example, whether you’re looking at a photo gallery from the Met Gala, or a gallery of seven different types of soup that you can make via a Bon Appétit recipe or an Epicurious recipe, we have these kind of shared common needs. Video is another example of that, newsletters, but we do need to make those different capabilities reflect the visual style and tone of each of those specific brands. And our design system reflects that where we have our componentry and then on top of that, we have what we call a brand identity. Those are things like fonts, colors. And we’ve been starting to really dig into what that means from a content designs perspective.
Sophie:
So how do we establish a brand-agnostic voice for those moments along a user’s journey, maybe like signing in or resetting your password, and how do we balance that out with those moments where we really do need to be speaking from the voice of a brand? The New Yorker is often the most common example of this sort of thing, because The New Yorker has such a unique house style, they hyphenate the word email, capitalize the word internet. And so when it comes to something like a pretty common sign-in flow, we still do really need to be considering those special touches that make The New Yorker sound like The New Yorker, regardless of whether you’re looking at it in a print magazine or on a screen.
Larry:
That’s so interesting. So each brand will have, is it sort of different terminology and well the fonts and colors and border-radiuses and all that stuff, but then the voice and tone stuff would be tailored to each one, but all operating in the same design system?
Sophie:
Yes. Yeah, exactly, yes. So we have a lot of conversations about when we really do need to have the ability to build in dynamic copy for a flow like that and enter in the ability to have kind of an exception to the rule. We also this year have really been focusing in and talking about building in content design and copy guidelines directly into our systems so that everything lives in one central place and we’re not having to bounce around between different areas of the business, or different resources, or repositories in order to find all of the documentation and guidance that we have.
Larry:
That’s a pet peeve of mine. I don’t know if you saw my Button talk a few years ago, yeah, and I think we still, it’s really gratifying and lovely to see this stuff taking hold, but it feels like, does it feel like you have parity as a content designer in the design system, or is it still mostly about front end engineers and interaction designers working on component designs, or do you feel like content design is coming to its own within the design system?
Sophie:
I would say it’s more about resourcing than politics at this point. So over the past few years, we’ve really been building out our team so that we can really dedicate content designers to all of the really consumer-facing high-touch sorts of areas of the business. And we’re just now getting to the point where we feel like we have the people that we really need. And so when it comes to incorporating content design into our design systems, something where we’ve all been tackling it piecemeal or especially when it comes to the resources that we have.
Sophie:
This year we have really been talking about how we can dedicate more effort to a lot of the shared practices that we really want to develop across the team. And I think this is something that I’m really especially excited to see with our structure as a team. So I was talking to you just before we started recording, I’m really excited about the fact that Sammie Spector, who was one of our first UX writers, now content designers, is stepping into really lead a lot of this work across the team. So we will be able to have a more focused effort around building those sorts of resources and guidance and really centralized knowledge directly into the systems that we use every day.
Larry:
Great. Yeah, so it sounds like because resourcing is the issue, we still have a little ways to go. I remember I was at a gig years ago where somebody came to me and said, “I have a dozen developers I need to keep busy, give me something to give them to do.” And so we’re not at that point yet with content designers, it doesn’t sound like, yeah.
Sophie:
Not at all.
Larry:
So, okay.
Sophie:
And that’s even, I would say one of the most glaring trends to come out of the org design survey was, yes, our teams are organizing themselves in slightly different ways, in different combinations of centralized and embedded versus decentralized and agency style, or what have you. But the most common response that came out of it was that we really still need to crack the code when it comes to resourcing. Really regardless of size of team, structure of team, community of craft, we’re still hearing that it’s really difficult to resource all of the projects that we know would really benefit from having content design really fully immersed in the work. And so we definitely have not gotten to that point, whether it’s about the projects themselves and especially for some of those centralized resources.
Larry:
One glimpse into that is that the kind of ratios in anyone, and you’re now in a position where you can, you know the exact ratios on your team, but in your research, I’m curious, did you identify, are there trends in the number of content designers to UX researchers to interaction designers to front-end engineers, the makeup of the teams?
Sophie:
Yes. So this was something that I was actually really surprised by. There was some semblance of consistency when it came to ratio of content designer to product designer. Across different sizes of companies and different maturity levels of teams, generally, there was a lot of alignment around a one-to-four ratio at this point. So one content designer to four product designers, which I would say still is not ideal. I think given that we still are really saying across the board that we need to solve resourcing. It was lower than I expected as an average across the board. I think it shows that we’re heading hopefully in a slightly better direction where we are able to really closely partner with our product designers, but I was really surprised to see that it is being teased out as a common trend across different company sizes.
Larry:
Interesting. Yeah, somehow that reminded me of something we talked about before. I think it is because we talked about these things back-to-back in a prior conversation, but just talking about the unique place of a design craft, it kind of like by industry and you’re in publishing, a place where words are the stock and trade and the thing you’re selling out in the world. Can you tell me about, is there a unique role for content design at a place that’s all about words?
Sophie:
I think that’s … And it’s a really interesting question. It’s one that I get all the time, is, okay, there are a million great writers at this company, where exactly do you slot in? I’ve found that working at a place where everyone really understands the value of excellent writing as a craft, as a content designer has done a lot of the legwork for me to be honest, in terms of explaining why finding the perfect tip of the iceberg word to live within our products, it makes it a bit clearer. I am not having to explain why there is a difference between next and continue, for example. So there’s that. I will say that I found that our roles have evolved a bit where because we are surrounded by excellent writers and people who often have journalism backgrounds and can really roll up their sleeves and get into the thick of things, we have the ability to take quite a strategic approach to the work that we’re doing.
Sophie:
So we are not the only writers in the room. We are not the “word people” quote, unquote. But we are able to really facilitate the conversations that get us to a place where we are able to communicate with our users in the most effective way possible. So we wear a number of different hats, and I think it helps reinforce the idea that content designers are the people who are putting words in text boxes. We obviously are doing eons more than that, leaps and bounds more than that. And being surrounded by people who, from the get go, really understand the value of really well done content and are willing to sit down and have a conversation for half an hour to an hour about the best way to communicate one specific concept really helps us push our work to another level.
Larry:
Yeah, I guess the way you answered that, we kind of got what the assumption underlying my question was that usually we have to explain what writing is, and there you don’t, I guess.
Sophie:
Exactly.
Larry:
Yeah. Hey, another thing we talked about sometime in the past was about your approach to, there’s all this talk about getting the seat at the table and just the ongoing challenges that a lot of content design teams have had. You told me something about, yeah, I just put meetings on the calendar. You have this sort of, I guess, seeking forgiveness, not asking permission. Can you talk a little bit about both that approach and how and whether it’s helped you, has it advanced the content design practice at Condé Nast?
Sophie:
Yeah. I mean, I think that the perspective that I’ve come into is if you have been hired to do a job, especially in this environment where it’s incredibly difficult to get the resources, whether it’s to use a word that I hate, headcount, or budget to hire you into this role as a content designer, you’re being expected to complete your job to the best of your ability. And if scheduling the meeting, being invited to the rituals, getting the information that you need to do your job is what you need in order to complete that, or fulfil your role, then I think it’s pretty difficult to argue that you shouldn’t be able to do something like that. So putting the meeting on the calendar, inserting yourself at the proper place in the product lifecycle, or the design lifecycle, that’s what you’re paid there to do. So I’m excited about a lot of the conversations that seem to be taking place across the content design industry.
Sophie:
I’m thinking of Relly’s talk at, I think it was Button last year. We don’t need a seat at the table, we are at the table. That sort of spirit is something that I think is quite welcome and honestly, I think that we deserve at this point. We’ve done a lot of advocacy. We’ve done a lot of education. We have the books, we have the conferences. I think we’re at a point where we are able to move forward, have that clear path in front of us to take the steps that we need in order to do a good job. We know what that looks like. We know what we need to do in order to get there, and hopefully there isn’t a whole lot standing in our way at this point.
Larry:
Yeah, it feels like there’s less friction in that regard now. One thing, a lot of it, and I think you mentioned this explicitly earlier, but I’m also curious how this all comes together in the design of your content design organization at Condé Nast, or elsewhere, or other places, as you’ve discovered in your research. You’ve talked about some of the different formats and things, but just how intentionally are these new schemes being designed and how much of it is it just kind of unfolding organically?
Sophie:
Yeah, I would say so just in terms of our team at Condé Nast, we are a centralized team, and each of our content designers is, I would say, embedded. We’re really pretty embedded at this point. We were clustered before where one content designer was yes, dedicated to an area of the business, but it was a couple of different areas of the business, they were kind of spread. So we have made these decisions, I would say pretty intentionally. It’s been really important for us to remain centralized at this point for I think some of the pros that people can generally see coming out of centralization. It really helps us build out that strong community of practice. You’re working with managers who really understand your plight. They understand what you’re working on and the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches. It helps us really own and pioneer that kind of advocacy and education and hiring and processes across the content design team.
Sophie:
And I feel like in terms of where our team is at right now, we really benefit from a lot of these sorts of things. We also do have some situations where while we have been able to build out the team, we do sometimes still need a little bit of flexibility when it comes to resourcing. Like, “Hey, this project has really taken on a life of its own. We might need another content designer to step in and assist, or even just provide some moral support sometimes.” And by having that centralized content design leadership, we’re able to see across those different bodies of work and identify opportunities to help bolster or strengthen different areas when they are in need. So that’s the reason why we’ve stayed centralized over the course of our growth and establishment as a content design practice. And then we’re embedded, which means that each one of these different brands or areas of the business does have unique needs.
Sophie:
So we do have, for example, one content designer that is hired, being fully dedicated to The New Yorker, for example. She’ll flex a bit and sometimes help with like brands, other long firm journalism sorts of brands. But has the opportunity to really build out her area of expertise, her ownership, her autonomy within that area of the business. And we found that that really does help establish that close working partnership with product design partners, with UX research partners, that we were having difficulty finding when we were bouncing between different areas of the business or between different teams. So that’s worked for us right now, and I’ve been really proud and really amazed to see what we’ve been able to accomplish as a team.
Sophie:
I mean, I’m biased of course, but I see it as working well for us right now. But I think one of the main learnings coming out of this study, and what I hope to continue to learn as I hear from and see what more and more teams are doing is that what works for you at one moment in time might change as your team evolves, or as your community of craft grows, or as your business evolves. And so it is really important to continue having this conversation. I really hope to use this as almost like a benchmark in terms of seeing what teams are doing right now. And I’m really interested in seeing how this sort of information evolves over time because I’m sure we will continue to adapt and evolve and change and mature.
Larry:
That’s great. Now, I want to see an industry organization that conducts and archives and collates that kind of research, so we don’t have to go through everything you just did, to pave the way for others. I want to ask you-
Sophie:
Huge shout-
Larry:
Yeah.
Sophie:
I was just a huge shout-out to … I was able to work with some of our really great UX researchers and analysts here to help put this together. But yeah, man, there’s so much information out there. There’s so much to chat about.
Larry:
Hey, Sophie, I can’t believe we’re coming up close to time already, but before we wrap up, is there anything last, anything that you want to revisit from the conversation, or just share with the folks?
Sophie:
No, I’m always amazed by how quickly the time lies. I feel like there are a million different topics that I would love to dig into and that I always enjoy hearing about, listening to this podcast, and catching up with you at various conferences over the years. But no, I’m so thankful that you’ve had me on and that I’ve gotten to catch up with you a little bit, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how all of this conversation around org design continues to evolve. I’ve learned so much from what our teams across the industry have been doing and expect to see much more growth in the years to come.
Larry:
Yeah, I think, and thanks for kicking it off with your research. That sounds like a great starting point. One very last thing, Sophie, if folks want to stay in touch, what’s the best way to follow you or connect online?
Sophie:
Yeah, I mean, I’m out there. I am generally chatting with folks, staying in touch on LinkedIn. I have the website, sophietahran.com. Always happy to catch up and hear how we can partner and what we can do together.
Larry:
Cool. I’ll put that in the show notes as well. Thank you so much, Sophie. I really enjoyed the conversation.
Sophie:
Yeah. Thanks so much, Larry. Great to chat.
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