Most design today is built to work. The harder question is whether it still makes culture.
Design as translation is the work of turning raw technical capability into something people adopt, argue about, and live with. Without that step, technology stays in the lab.
There is a line from Hartmut Esslinger that first struck me during my Master's, and it has never really left: ✨ »Design translates technology into culture.« 🤔
I feel like in recent years, design has most and foremost become incredibly efficient though. At my design agency SCHUMACHER, we often build systems, components, and high-performing interfaces. That's important work — essential, even. But lately, I find myself craving something on top of that: the spark of the new again.
Design has the power to shape not just what works, but what matters. To give emerging technologies human relevance. To ask the uncomfortable questions. To open space for imagination — not just optimization. This is the judgment that becomes the designer's edge as design evolves in the AI era.
I believe there are hints that the momentum for that shape of design is coming back. After years of playing it safe, the cultural pendulum is beginning to swing. As a tiny example, just look at Google's Material Design language — not only less flat, but also more daring to allow playfulness. It's a small but significant signal.
Now, let's make space to be bold again. To use design not only as a tool of refinement, but as a force of invention.
👉 Who's experimenting right now? Who's building weird, wonderful, not-quite-ready things? Let's talk. Let's collaborate!
Read next:
- Designer archetypes that get hired — the personalities thriving when taste matters more than tooling
- A European approach to design — building meaningful, not just efficient, products
- Optimistic about the state of the design scene — why the pendulum is swinging back
FAQ
What does "design translates technology into culture" mean?
It means the designer's job is to take raw technical capability — a chip, a protocol, an AI model — and turn it into something people actually adopt, argue about, and live with. Without that step, technology stays in the lab. The phrase is usually attributed to Hartmut Esslinger, founder of frog design, and it captures the middle ground between engineering (making things work) and art (making something that means something to a few).
Why has design become so focused on efficiency?
Over the last decade, design matured as a business function. It got measured, scaled, and productized — design systems, OKRs, conversion funnels. Most of that is good news. The cost is that the more speculative, weird, and category-creating work got pushed out of the room. Right now the pendulum is starting to swing back, but it is not all the way there.
What is the difference between design, engineering, and art?
Engineering makes something work. Art makes something that means something to a few. Design sits between the two: it has to work, it has to scale, and it has to mean something to enough people that the technology actually crosses into culture. The translation metaphor captures that middle ground precisely, and it is the part of the job that is hardest to systematize.
How does this connect to AI and the current design moment?
AI is the most recent technology waiting to be translated. The same pattern repeats with every new platform: first the engineers build it, then designers decide what it becomes in everyday life. Right now, that second step is wide open, and designers who treat it as a cultural job rather than a UI job have an outsized opportunity.
What should design agencies do to reclaim the cultural side of the work?
Protect time and budget for speculative briefs. Hire for taste and judgment, not just for tooling. Push clients past the safe option when the safe option is also the forgettable one. And show the work — publish the weird prototypes, the half-finished ideas, the references that do not yet have a product attached.