The top 50 content design resources of 2025

These articles and resources were the most popular in our weekly Dash newsletter through 2025. Sign up so you don’t miss useful links every week!

50. “Everyone kills what they love”: UX writing, invisibility, and AI

Burcu Özgüçlü argues that UX writing isn’t dying in the age of AI – it’s becoming dangerously invisible. When the labor behind clear interfaces is invisible, it’s easier for organizations to undervalue and erase it.

49. Content design is about making services better

Ray Newman reminds us that “small improvements matter”, and that content designers can help make those small improvements add up to big improvements over time.

48. Applying Agile principles to content design

Thomas Chan, Head of Copy at Bybit, shows how Agile concepts can help content teams manage chaos without burning out. He covers clarifying scope before saying yes, mapping the end-to-end workflow, using Kanban to control workload, structuring squads for ownership, and running retros to keep quality and collaboration high even during peak demand.

47. What happens when junior design jobs disappear?

Carly Ayres argues that the traditional apprenticeship path into design and creative work is vanishing — replaced by unpaid gigs, cold DMs and a survival-of-the-connected ethos. The old ladder may be gone, but with accessible tools and community support, there’s a chance to build a new, more inclusive route into creative work.

46. Building a UX writing assistant: A step‑by‑step journey

Content designer Elodie Veysseyre walks through building a custom UX-writing assistant at her company.

45. Scott Pilgrim knows how I feel as a content designer

Austin Mallick compares working as a content designer to the constant battles in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. He reflects on the everyday struggle of balancing stakeholder demands (like repeated questions about style rules) and productive content work, while trying not to burn out.

44. A field guide for frauds

In this essay, Scott Pierce speaks directly to the emotional toll of working in content and UX design — that pervasive sense of being a “fraud.” He argues that feelings of impostor syndrome often stem less from real incompetence and more from structural factors.

43. Where AI is failing design systems

Ben Callahan (with Nathan Curtis) reviews feedback from 95 design-system practitioners about when AI tools help — and when they break trust entirely.

42. What makes content accessible?

Jack Garfinkel argues that content accessibility means making information usable by people with diverse needs, not just visually, but cognitively and technologically.

41. AI interface: when intelligence outgrows its container

Sen Lin argues that modern AI models have outgrown the chat box and that today’s conversational UI is a mismatch for what LLMs can actually do.

40. UX writing A/B tests that actually boost clicks (with examples)

Seb Smith explains why UX writers need to move beyond intuition and use A/B testing to prove the impact of their words. He frames testing as a way to validate tone, branding, and microcopy decisions using real user behaviour instead of stakeholder opinions, and outlines how simple copy variations can meaningfully shift clicks, sign-ups, and conversions.

39. How to make a career switch into content design

Ray Newman offers a grounded, practical guide for people moving into content design from fields like journalism, marketing, or copywriting. He breaks down the real skills the job demands: collaboration, stakeholder management, precision, patience, and comfort with process-heavy work.

38. How to build a resilient design team

Jonas Downey shares a first-principles guide to leading design teams through rapid change, shifting tools, and constant pressure. He argues that resilience starts with team health including psychological safety, realistic bandwidth, and open sharing.

37. How to build a content design agent

Russell Norris describes how he built VERBI, an AI-powered content design agent at Intercom, to scale his impact as a solo content designer. The article shows that good AI output depends on good systems: solid style guides, tone frameworks, glossaries, and component-level rules.

36. The rise of UX writing in India 

Sidika Sehgal appears on the Writers of Silicon Valley podcast to share how UX writing is emerging rapidly in India and the challenges that come with building a young industry in a large, diverse market.

35. Where’s the AI design renaissance?

Erik D. Kennedy argues that despite massive hype of the last few years, there’s no evidence that current AI tools have triggered a true renaissance in design.

34. Good writing might be bad content design

Michael Restiano argues that polished prose and stellar editorial skills don’t necessarily translate into effective UX content.

33. AI interfaces and the role of good writing

Nick DiLallo argues that the biggest usability problems in today’s AI products come down to unclear, imprecise, or misleading writing. As interfaces shift from simple chat boxes to more complex patterns, the language hasn’t kept up.

32. The content crisis in digital design

Chuck Pearson writes that today’s web is drowning in sameness not because designers lack visual skill, but because teams skip the hard work of content. When content arrives late designers fall back on trendy aesthetics instead of meaningful messaging.

31. Figma is dead. UX is dead. Designers are dead. Long live AI — not.

Hamza Labrinssi dismantles the hyperbolic “AI will replace UX” narrative. He argues the panic stems from shallow takes, not reality. Visual design tools aren’t dying, and UX isn’t being replaced by AI-generated mockups.

30. How GM built a scalable content standards program 

David Hamilton, Head of Content Design at General Motors, led the creation of a centralized, enforceable content standards system used across mobile, web, and in-vehicle interfaces. He explains to the team at Ditto how it all came about.

29. Even without I, there’s always U

As AI agents replace traditional interfaces, content designers shift from writing screens to engineering alignment, guardrails, and shared language across invisible systems. Trish Winter-Hunt argues that in an agentic world, content becomes the infrastructure that keeps multi-agent behavior coherent, trustworthy, and human.

28. How UX writing can support Arabic speakers

Antonios Nader argues that direct translation undermines Arabic UX because it loses context, tone, cultural nuance, and often breaks the UI. He makes the case for Arabic-first UX writing that embraces conversational language, cultural expectations, and RTL design from the start.

27. The UX writer’s guide to Figma 

This article from Figma walks through practical workflows for drafting, riffing, organizing strings, collaborating with designers, and handing off copy. It also covers advanced tools like plugins, widgets, auto layout, and local components that help writers manage copy at scale.

26. My journey as a content design intern

Sophie, a content design intern at Wise in London, describes owning a real 10-week project (improving the Wise Business invite flow), doing research, designing, presenting in crits, and testing with real customers, all while collaborating with designers, engineers, and analysts.

25. 10 books every content designer should read

Andrew Tipp curates 10 core titles that together cover the full stack of content work: hands-on practice (research, UX writing, accessibility), plus higher-level content ops, strategy, leadership, and structured content.

24. Building design systems that scale content

Sarah Kessler says that instead of building separate “content design systems,” teams should evolve their overall design system so content is treated as a first-class part of design, not an add-on. Kessler shows how embedding content designers into systems work (views, workflows, patterns, components, and communication frameworks) bakes information architecture, hierarchy, and messaging decisions into the system itself.

23. The 6 jobs of words in products

Dave Connis reframes product copy as doing one of six specific “jobs” inside a system: inform, educate, sell, ask, represent, or instruct. By naming these jobs and tying each to a clear outcome (e.g. “inform” = give context, “educate” = build understanding, “instruct” = tell the user what to do), it gives content designers a way to push back on “requirement salad” and negotiate scope.

22. From insights to impact: how Atlassian content designers run research

April Lipson and Jacqui Devaney outline a practical framework for planning, running, and applying content research: choosing the right method, building lightweight test assets, recruiting the right users, and turning insights into messaging, patterns, and guidelines that actually shape the product.

21. The product design talent crisis

Matt Ström-Awn says that tech’s fixation on “super ICs” has created a widening gap in the design talent pipeline. Junior roles have vanished, senior expectations keep rising, and teams are stuck in a feedback loop where short-term output wins over long-term capability building.

20. How to build a content design GPT

Hunter Gebron breaks down a practical, beginner-friendly method for turning your team’s guidelines into a working custom GPT.

19. Version control: How a UX writer weighs one word against another

Henry Freedland walks through the linguistic and conceptual problem behind naming Figma’s new prototype offline mode. Each iteration exposed a deeper mismatch between what the system actually did and what users would expect a verb like preload, load, present, or prepare to mean.

18. UX writing for video games

Ben Moran joins Writers of Silicon Valley to talk about his time as a UX Writer at Rockstar (creators of Grand Theft Auto). Unlike product interfaces, game UIs must support fast decisions, complex systems, and narrative tone at the same time.

17. Content systems vs pattern libraries 

Scott Pierce says that most teams mistake “content guidelines” for actual systems. Pattern libraries (lists of examples, do-this-not-that rules, and frozen microcopy) break under scale, edge cases, and AI. Mature design systems work because they encode principles, decision frameworks, and structure, not just samples.

16. Design system component audit and linting 

Luis Ouriach’s widget gives teams a fast way to audit and troubleshoot design system components directly inside Figma. It scans files for unbound tokens, missing metadata, hidden components, inconsistent variants, and publishing issues, producing both quick summaries and deep analysis.

15. The evolution of UX Writing at Microsoft

Amy Lanfear traces how UX writing at Microsoft grew from ad-hoc help-topic cleanup to a formal discipline embedded in product design. Today, Microsoft’s UX writers operate as strategic contributors across AI, experimentation, and conversational systems.

14. How content design opens unexpected career paths

A panel hosted by UX Content Design NYC explored how writing, structure, and storytelling translate far beyond traditional UX roles. Their message was consistent: content design teaches problem-solving through language, and those skills remain valuable even when job titles change.

13. A content design approach for connecting with Gen Z

Gen Z want products that reflect their values: safety, inclusion, honesty, and real connection. Angelique Little explains how to design experiences around those values by focusing on emotional truth, global and inclusive UX, and “hard questions” about what dating products actually promise versus what they deliver.

12. 3 ways AI can improve your content strategy

Work & Co’s Nick Parish says that content strategists should treat AI as an amplifier, not a copy machine, using it to mine huge content inventories, stress-test information architectures, and act as a harsh editorial sparring partner rather than a ghostwriter.

11. Grounding GenAI content guidelines in risk management

Frances Gordon writes that before a team writes an AI usage policy, it needs a structured risk-management foundation. She outlines a six-step process adapted from standards like ISO 31000: establish context, identify risks, analyze and prioritize them, evaluate what to accept or avoid, design proportionate controls, and monitor outcomes over time.

10. Using Gemini for content design desk research

Lucie Johnson puts Google’s new “Deep Research” feature to the test in a fictional UK government project, asking whether AI can meaningfully stand in for early-stage user insights. The result is a mix of helpful structure and unreliable sourcing, showing why AI-generated research still needs heavy verification and human judgment.

9. Did we lose movie rentals for THIS?

Erin Schroeder dissects Netflix’s chaotic taxonomy and half-baked personalization, arguing that streaming sacrificed the simple, legible experience of the video store for endless, unstructured carousels.

8. Passive voice in UX writing: what really matters

Oluwatoyin Adeoye challenges the default “active good, passive bad” rule by showing where passive voice actually improves UX writing. From centering user outcomes to softening sensitive messages, the article reframes passive voice as a strategic tool rather than a mistake.

7. The future of design collaboration at Figma

In this episode of Awkward Silences, Andrew Hogan, Figma’s Head of Insights, breaks down how design collaboration is shifting and what teams still get wrong. He shares new research on cross-functional workflows, the realities of AI’s impact on productivity, and why “spiky” roles are becoming more common.

6. Beyond style guides: build a living content system with dev tools

Jeremy Hoover says that content guidelines don’t fail because they’re wrong, they fail because they live in forgotten docs no one uses. This piece lays out how to structure pattern files, how to build AI prompt templates, and even how to turn your guidelines into a searchable app.

5. The rise of the generalist

Carly Ayres explores why hybrid skill sets are becoming essential as AI accelerates specialist work. Instead of diluting expertise, strong generalists combine depth in one area with fluency across adjacent disciplines, helping teams bridge gaps in product development.

4. AI chatbots can’t fix a bad website

Erin Schroeder writes  that teams often rush to add AI chatbots without fixing the underlying content and IA issues that make a site hard to use. Without that foundation, chatbots amplify problems: they misroute users, give imprecise answers, and increase frustration.

3. Forget tone, embrace systems thinking 

In this episode of Writers of Silicon Valley, Dave Connis argues that content design must move past surface-level debates (like tone, style, or comma usage) and focus on systems. He outlines how string files, content architecture, and clearer definitions of “the job the content is doing” drive real user success.

2. Designing content-first in product environments

Emma Aldington argues that content-first design isn’t only for large government sites. Her examples show how simple content wireframes can improve conversion, clarify interactions, and speed up collaboration between content and product designers.

1. The four pillars model of content design

Andrew Tipp introduces a visual framework that breaks content design into four pillars: research, plan, design, and maintain, built on a foundation of core UX principles. He shows how this model can make your process easier to explain, scale to different project sizes, and even help teams target the right areas for growth.

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