The Importance of Language in Design

“If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.” Oscar Wilde

Today, of all the designs that coexist, the valuable design is the design that have the ability to solve problems. Unlike other more palpable designs, this practice requires a deep understanding of a given situation and an impeccable thought process that connects - in a logical manner - a proposed solution to its originating questions.

Language provides the building blocks of robust thinking. Without it, there is no way you can identify and manipulate the abstractions required to process the reality you want to change.

If we all agree that language is so critical to successfully conduct key design activities, how come language-related courses (English literature, creative writing, rhetoric, etc.) aren't mandatory yet in design schools?

Language is at the core of designing. Lack of command of language indicates clouded thinking. Clearly articulated thoughts are an indication of sound thinking. When collaborating with others, when communicating in the context of design, every word counts, and extensive use of language matters. The nuances involved in choosing between one word versus another matter and can make a huge difference.

If we think about design as a spectrum we find on one end ideas and on the other end the final materialized solution. Language is the first tool you use to get closer to the solutions and to start defining them better. After thinking has produced a clear yet simple outcome you can move to basic diagrams, then sketches, then prototypes, and then build the real solutions; you move from the most abstract design expressed in words to the most real design manifested in atoms. If that first abstract step is shaky and does not provide a solid argumentative foundation on which to build the rest, then everything falls apart and it makes irrelevant how good you can be at any other phases of design.

When I attended design graduate school, one of the things that struck me the most was that people who had an undergraduate in humanities and no background in design where the ones that did best in school. Why was that? Because they are so used to deal with abstract ideas and concepts that for them the process of thinking, coming up with hypotheses, building arguments, identifying premises and reaching conclusions was something they had been trained for. The students with a pure design background struggled the most at the beginning because they came from a very visual (communication designers) or material (product designers) world where they used mainly visual abstractions to express themselves. Eventually they got much better at using language to advance their design thinking but you could definitely tell the gap in sophistication between the more abstract camp versus the more tangible.

I wish I would have been taught the importance language had in designing when I was 18 in my first year of design school. I wish someone would have told me to read as much non-fiction as possible; to acquire a vocabulary as wide as possible; to keep a dictionary and a thesaurus always close; to understand the basics of traditional logic structure (premise-fact-conclusion; to write often not to publish but to keep a healthy routine of thinking; to understand cognitive biases; to identify fallacies; to be able to debate with objective and logical arguments; to defend a thinking process you have followed.