What comes first in design? The chicken or the egg?

An important question to ask before starting a project is "will this need design driven content, or content driven design?" In other words, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Unless this is defined in advance, there can be ambiguity about responsibilities, deliverables, and deadlines.

When it comes to design in particular, process is almost as important as results. You need to manage stakeholder expectations, and the best way to do that is to agree upon outcomes in advance.

Sometimes content drives designs. (We want X, Y, and Z content on a page. Let's design how that might look).

Other times, content is driven by design. (industry best practices for landing pages, including competitor benchmarking, indicates we want these types of content in this order).

As long as everyone agrees on the approach, both can be valid.