Care about the content

Recently I've been asked to look at a few heritage projects where the initial design team has done an attractive job with the presentation, but has made a mess of the content. Content matters. Design is communication, not just decoration, and attractive design will never cover the cracks of badly-handled content, or factually incorrect content. So if you're commissioning design work, test your designer on how they handle content before you appoint them. Otherwise you might end up with a stylish sieve - nice to look at but full of holes.