ESS.004 — Design: Who is Speaking.

Film has directors. Music has composers. Literature has writers. Design has agencies. Because before it lost the ability to speak about life, design agreed to stop speaking on its own behalf.

We know who made a movie even if three hundred people worked on it. We know who wrote a song even if there are producers, engineers, and an entire industry behind it. We know who authored a book even if there are editors, proofreaders, and a commercial machine behind it.

Something strange happens in design. The larger the project, the more the person who conceived it fades into the background. Contemporary design doesn’t resemble an author-driven discipline. It resembles consulting. A design professional with thirty years of experience can rattle off five prestigious agencies without a moment’s hesitation. They can cite methodologies. They can name frameworks. But ask them to name five contemporary designers and tell you what they wrote, what they advocated for, or what kept them up at night.

The list is getting shorter. Discipline continues to produce people with a voice. What it has stopped doing is remembering their names.

The medium is not the message

A director doesn't make movies about cameras. A musician doesn't write songs about microphones. A writer doesn't devote his entire body of work to explaining how a novel works. They use their medium to talk about something else. About love. About violence. About a mother. About a city. About death. About desire. About the fear of being alone.

The medium is not the subject. It is the language.

The design has confused its language with its subject. The objects were the language. Life was the subject.

An agency can have a strategy. A framework can have principles. A brand can have values.

But none of them had a mother. None of them felt afraid at age ten. None of them lost anyone. None of them fell in love. None of them woke up one morning wondering what the hell they were doing with their lives. And maybe that's why they can't talk about her.

Organizations can produce objects. Only people can have a life worth telling. When the author disappears, the possibility of having a subject also disappears. The ego disappears. The position disappears. The subject disappears. The process remains.

He has made the process the main topic

Design has developed a strange obsession with talking about design. About how it researches. About how it aligns. About how it iterates. About how it delivers. It has turned the process into the subject. Cinema uses cinema to talk about life. Music uses music to talk about life. Literature uses literature to talk about life. Design should use objects to talk about life.

Arrival

Sometimes I've felt like Amy Adams in Arrival. Not because I was trying to decipher an alien language, but because I was in a work meeting—or reading LinkedIn. Some people seemed to understand perfectly what was going on. I understood every word, but I didn't have a fucking clue what they were talking about.

Alignment. Strategy. Impact. Innovation. Transformation. Purpose. Experience. The words, individually, made sense. The problem started when we put them together, and suddenly, I wondered what would happen if we started using that same language outside of work.

Outside the room

Your child paints a wall and, instead of telling them it is wrong, you explain to them that we have identified an opportunity.

Your friend tells you that her partner has left her, and you respond that you are excited to explore new possibilities moving forward.

Your mother calls you in tears, and you tell her that her feedback has been received and will be taken into account in future iterations.

You show up two hours late for dinner and explain that you ran into a few challenges along the way.

You get caught cheating and clarify that there was a misalignment between different stakeholders.

Your dad tells you he's sick and tired of you, and you reply: "I appreciate your perspective, and I see this as an opportunity to continue this conversation.".

The blood of language

The problem is not using these words. The problem is that we have used them so much that we no longer know when to stop doing it. Because language should help you say something. Not avoid saying it. A person can be afraid. They can be sad. They can be lost. They can have messed up. They can be fed up.

But, after going through enough meetings, presentations, and strategies, everything ends up converted into an opportunity, a challenge, a friction, a pain point, or a misalignment. The experience is still there. Only someone has drained the blood out of it. And maybe that is the problem. If you take language out of a presentation and it starts to sound like a disease, maybe it is not describing reality. Maybe it is anesthetizing it.

Try it on someone you love. Talk to them the way you talk at work. When they tell you to fuck off, don't change your language. Ask yourself which of the two was the alien language.

The plural form protects

Perhaps design did not abandon the self out of humility. It abandoned the self because the self has consequences. Saying I means someone can ask you why. That someone can dissent. That someone can remember that you said that.

The plural protects. We believe it does not make mistakes the same way a person does. The team decided it has no face. The organization considers it cannot feel shame. The plural distributes responsibility until it no longer belongs to anyone. And a voice that belongs to no one can no longer belong to history either.

A movie is a collective work. An orchestra is collective. A kitchen is collective. A magazine is collective. And yet, we still know who directs, who composes, who cooks, who writes.

Collaboration never demanded erasing authorship. It was only design that began to confuse working together with pretending that no one had thought of anything.

Complexity does not require anonymity

But there is a reasonable objection. Contemporary products are too complex to pretend that a single person created them. An app can involve hundreds of people: engineers, designers, researchers, data specialists, legal teams, operations, and customer service. A system doesn't always have a single creator.

But that doesn't mean nobody has a voice. Complexity explains collaboration. It doesn't explain the disappearance of a position. A movie is also complex. A city is too. A restaurant too. An orchestra too. And yet, complexity has never forced the elimination of the question: who thought of this.

Authorship doesn't mean: I did all of this. It can mean something much more humble: I was here. This is what I saw. This is what I stood for. And this is the part I answer for.

Complexity demands collaboration. It does not demand anonymity.

The voice of responsibility

And there is another risk. That of confusing the recovery of the voice with the recovery of the ego. Design has already produced enough objects designed to feed the vanity of the person who signs them. A signature does not make a decision a good one. An author can also be wrong. Can impose. Can fail to listen. Can design a beautiful chair for a body that cannot get up from it.

Saying "I" doesn't make you right. It makes you responsible when you aren't. Voice doesn't make you right. It gives you responsibility.

Human Notes doesn't need more designers saying, "This is mine." It needs more designers who can say, "I stood up for this." And now I want to know what inspired you.

The voice does not replace listening. It makes it possible. Because only someone who has a position can change it. An organization can publish a principle. A person can say: I was wrong.

Who the fuck is we. Who had the intuition. Who defended it. Who actually believes in it. Who would be willing to sign their name to it if it goes wrong tomorrow.

The plural can be collaboration. But it can also be an alibi. The self can make mistakes. The "we" can hide. Collaboration should not demand the disappearance of the voice. Working with others never required no longer being someone.

He sold the signature for the invoice

Design did not stop having authors because it started working in teams. It stopped having them when it confused collaboration with the disappearance of the voice. Twenty people present a project. They all say: We believe. We think. We decide. But no one appears. The plural became the professional mask of a discipline that began to be ashamed of the first person. Saying this is wrong became less elegant than saying we have identified an opportunity. Thus, a voice was gradually replaced by a language. A position by a methodology. A signature by a logo. And a person by a department. Design gained stability. It lost the signature. It traded the signature for the invoice. It traded the responsibility of having something to say for the safety of saying it together.

The transaction

I became us. Voice into corporate language. Author into vendor. Signature into logo. Position into alignment. Question into brief. Life into data. Story into case study. Text into framework. Work into deliverable. Culture into service.

A work of art tries to endure. A deliverable is designed to end. A work of art has something to lose. A deliverable has a due date. A work of art asks: will it still matter tomorrow. A deliverable asks: is it ready for Friday.

The problem isn't that the design has to deliver results. The problem begins when it no longer attempts to do anything that is worth surviving the delivery.

Stop disappearing

Regaining our voice doesn't mean quitting our jobs. Nor does it mean leaving the agencies. Nor does it mean turning down clients. Nor does it mean pretending we can go back to a time when a single person designed the world from a desk. It means something more uncomfortable: stopping handing down decisions without leaving a trace of who stood behind them.

Perhaps an organization needs alignment. But someone should be able to say: I did not agree. Perhaps a team needs a collective decision. But someone should be able to explain: this was the reason why I fought for this. Perhaps a product is too complex to have a single author. But no person should be too small to have a voice within it.

The alternative is not the lonely designer. The alternative is a collaboration in which people do not disappear. There is no need to abandon the system. There is a need to stop disappearing within it.

First, stop practicing it

A discipline does not lose its capabilities all at once. It stops practicing them. First, it stops using a voice. Then, it stops needing it. Finally, it stops remembering it ever had it. When a discipline loses the self, it also loses the ability to say what only a person can say.

There are capabilities that do not disappear suddenly. They cease to be exercised until their absence is confused with professionalism. Capabilities do not disappear on their own. They cease to be exercised. And after many years of not using them, their absence is confused with professionalism.

When proper names disappear, the discipline keeps working. What it stops producing is history. A profession can survive without authors. A culture cannot. Culture is a conversation among people who can be remembered. People who wrote something. Who defended something. Who were wrong in public. Who said I.

Frameworks survive five years. Authors survive generations. Design didn't stop being culture because it stopped producing objects. It stopped being culture when it stopped producing voices that outlived the contracts.

Someone

A discipline does not lose a capacity all at once. First it stops exercising it. Then it stops needing it. Finally it stops remembering it ever had it. Design did not lose its voice because it stopped producing. It lost it because it stopped asking what anyone had to say. It stopped asking who was speaking.

Then the self disappeared. Then the signature disappeared. Then the position disappeared. And he kept talking. About processes. About systems. About impact. About innovation. About users. Until one day he wanted to talk about life again. And he discovered something uncomfortable. He had eliminated from language the only creature capable of having a life.

Someone. Not the star designer. Anyone who can still say: I was here. I saw this. I stood up for this. And I answer for my share.