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Designer

Comparing language to a picture, one late-eighteenth-century grammarian defines nouns as forms, adjectives as colours, and the verb as the canvas itself, upon which the colours are visible. An invisible canvas, entirely overlaid by the brightness and design of the words, but one that provides language with the site on which to display its painting. — Michel Foucault, philosopher. The Order of Things, 1966

We all know that design involves a codex of taste—evident to its practitioners yet largely unwritten. To explain this understanding a key would help; that is, a system of good and bad that resembles design yet states explicit rules. We can then attempt to ‘read’ design via this system and see how it fits.

I claim that writing might be useful, for there are actual principles of good writing—some of which are fixed on paper. While learning to write well I discovered that many of the principles attributed to good writing apply to design as well.