Chris Foley’s Design & Messaging Tenets: Clarity, Rhythm, and Real-World Communication

Design for the message, not the design.

I say this constantly: don’t write to a design. Instead design for the message.

That means you never start with visuals before you know what you’re trying to say.

Too many people start with a layout full of placeholder text then shove real copy into that layout and hope it fits. It never does. That’s like dressing the wrong person in someone else’s tailored suit. This is one of the big problems people experience when they fire up a Squarespace template or build something on ClickFunnels or Wix. 

Every service page, every campaign follows a recipe: make an argument, state your case, show what life looks like once the problem is handled. Then reinforce it with benefits, proof, and something that anticipates objections. It’s persuasion architecture, not decoration.

Your campaign isn’t a magazine spread. Nobody’s flipping through your newsletter like it’s Popular Science. They’re scanning for what matters. Make it matter fast.

Clarity beats cleverness.

If your message makes people stop and think about what you meant instead of what you offer, you’ve already lost them. Clever is fun, but clarity converts.

So many marketing teams get wrapped up in trying to sound interesting that they forget to sound understandable. The point isn’t to show off your vocabulary or prove that you’ve got a copywriter with a thesaurus. The point is to communicate what you do and why it matters, as quickly as possible.

I see this mistake everywhere: brands hiding behind wordplay, acronyms, or vague positioning language. They call themselves “solution providers,” “strategic partners,” or “innovation leaders,” and the customer walks away thinking, I still don’t know what you actually do.

Clarity is empathy. 

It’s the recognition that people are busy and don’t have time to decode your message. When someone lands on your site, they should know within five seconds what problem you solve and who you solve it for.

Cleverness makes you feel good about your brand. Clarity makes your audience feel good about choosing your brand. And when you build your design, layout, and tone around that principle, the entire experience gets sharper. Your copy breathes. Your calls to action make sense. Your customer actually moves.

The rule is simple: if your audience has to think about what you mean, you’re being clever. If they nod and say, that’s exactly what I need, you’re being clear. Clear?

White space is your friend.

Blank space isn’t waste, it’s breathing room. It’s how the message lands.
Every song needs rhythm. Dense paragraph, pause, headline, pause, image. That rhythm is what allows someone to absorb your point. When everything’s crammed together, you lose pacing and hierarchy.

White space builds trust. White space tells me you’re confident enough not to fill every moment of silence with awkward words. It’s pacing, hierarchy, and breath, the visual equivalent of letting someone process what you’ve just said. 

Modern simplicity over custom complexity.

There’s no badge of honor in doing things the hard way. Custom HTML newsletters had their moment in 2003. Today, native builders like Mailchimp’s are faster, cleaner, and far more reliable. The old bespoke approach burns time and budget for no measurable gain. You don’t need 15 fonts fighting each other. You don’t need custom code to make your message look expensive. What you need is modern simplicity: layouts that load fast, render correctly, and adapt beautifully.
Every pixel should exist for a reason. Design isn’t a parade of tricks; it’s a delivery system for meaning.

Value-first communication.

Before you sell, give something worth having. This is particularly true for newsletter campaigns. Every campaign should offer value before it makes an offer. That might be education, insight, or just a great resource roundup. When your audience gets an email from you, they should think, “This is useful,” whether or not they buy anything that day. Value earns permission. Permission earns loyalty. Sales follow.

Conversational brand voice.

Talk like a human. Srsly. Lol. Brb. I digress but you get the point.

People are allergic to brochure-speak. They want clarity, warmth, and a hint of personality. Drop the corporate polish and say what you actually mean.
For example, my own tone  is conversational because I’m not trying to impress, I’m trying to connect. I have a client in the tech space whose messaging goes like this:

“The other guys suck. We don’t suck. Let me tell you why.”

That’s pretty on the nose but it always gets a laugh, and it lands the truth: they’ve built a business out of not sucking in an industry that’s known for professionals who are terrible to work with. 

Your voice should sound like you’re talking to a smart friend, not reading off a script. Authenticity is the only sustainable brand tone left.

When a visitor lands on your page your first job is to establish relatedness. Your second job is to build trust. And you always have to earn the next scroll. You can’t assume that scroll is going to happen. You gotta earn it. 

In Closing

Good messaging isn’t about decoration, it’s about communication that earns attention.
Design for the message. Speak with clarity. Leave breathing room. Keep it simple. Build where people live. Speak to what they’re going through now. Lead with value, and talk like a human being. Do that consistently and you’ll do more than sell a service, you’ll build trust that outlasts the campaign.

Cheers, Chris