I’ve started reading a wonderful (Italian) book drawing similarities between the design process and translation paradigms – Design è Traduzione.
In a word: 📐 designers act as 📚 translators by moving and transitioning among different linguistic worlds, different materials, different techniques and technologies, different forms and functions, different media and formats.
👉🏻 They interpret a need, understand an issue, and translate the results they come up with into an artifact. They give them a shape.
They don’t have a source text, but they still have a “something” to translate into “something” else.
🎨 The identity of a company to be translated into visual branding resources.
🎨 A set of data to be translated into a visual representation.
🎨 A book’s title to be translated into a cover.
🎨 A book’s texts and pictures to be translated into a game app.
With their creations, therefore, designers act as mediators to provide access to a world that would otherwise remain unseen. 🖼