Ironic that such a basic element of creating good communication materials is not a term that many people recognize. In short, it is working to tease out the fundamental elements of a project or program, and organizing them into something coherent and compelling. This is basically a rather uninteresting way of saying that it is all about making things interesting.

To do that requires equal parts of listening and writing. Listening to you –  the client- talk about your project; listening to the trends in the marketplace; listening to the feedback from the people you’re trying to reach. The writing is done mostly in the solitary confinement of a computer desk.

While project messaging is mostly about the listening and the writing, that message doesn’t go very far without something to make people stop long enough to read it. For that, you need visual design and branding.