designer as author, and possibly, architect?

"Like the poetic translator, the designer transforms not only the literal meaning of the elements but the spirit, too ... the designer is the intermediary" - Michael Rock's "Designer as Author"

I approached this piece with my mind made up. As a longtime admirer of the field of design, I was 100% certain that designers were, without a doubt, among those who should consider themselves to be “authors”; they deserved the sense of agency and importance that commonly accompanies the various forms of authorship. As described in the article, the term carries with it a certain air of legitimacy that could serve to empower the autonomy of a designer’s work.

However, after reading … full 180.

Rock’s positioning of designers as performers and directors resonated with my understandings of the job and processes of design, and convinced me of the shortcomings of the term “author” as a designer description. Nothing, however, hit home more so than his explanation of designers as translators.

When reading his reasoning, another line of thinking came to me: could designers also be considered … architects?

Architects are builders. They are creators. They are perhaps some of the greatest translators on Earth, and yes, architecture is a form of design, and every architect is, in fact, a designer; but isn’t every designer an architect as well? I liken the idea of designers as architects to his depiction of translators, specifically when working from the perspective that design’s ultimate goal is seen as “the expression of a given content rendered in a form that reaches a new audience” (I wanted to include this in the original quote above, but the character limit chose to revolt against me).

Essentially what I’m saying is that as architects, designers build and create the world around us by transforming their “blueprints” into the final design product that reaches into every facet of our daily lives. From that perspective, design really is one of, if not the most, potent and tangible forms of world-building.

It’s actually quite insane to think about.

Loosely-related afterthoughts: the “designer as translator” idea also got me to thinking about other creatives who use translation in their practice. What immediately came to mind was the celebrity wardrobe stylist, whose job it is to translate pieces of a collection into a fully-realized “moment” on their clients. They take what’s already been seen in one way, and create an entirely new version of it through their styling. To take this parallel even further, the term “architect” is also not an uncommon term in the world of fashion styling. Take Law Roach, the “Image Architect” famous for his flawless work with Zendaya, or Misa Hylton, simply known as “The Architect” for her pioneering styling of icons like Lil’ Kim in the hip-hop fashion industry. It’s all (sort of) connected.

Designers = translators = architects. That’s basically all I’m trying to say here.