Design, Culture, and Language

The first place I started in my attempt to define these three words (design, culture and language) was http://www.wordnik.com/. It is my favorite online dictionary complete with examples from texts and definitions from multiple dictionaries. It has a whole online dictionary culture.

I found that many of the minor definitions of design relate to outlining or sketching an idea. That intrigued me because those definitions note the mapping principle of design. It is important to include the creative process in the definition of design. With that in mind I concluded that the definition of design is: the progressive creation of an idea into a final product.

To define culture I took another approach. I thought of what culture can be. The culture of a company or other institutions, the sociological definition of culture, and high culture were the ones that came to mind. The definition culture is the collective conscience of a group.

My unofficial definition of language is language defined by its relationship to structure and meaning. The way I define it does not necessarily have to relate to linguistics. There can be a language of a design, a work of art, literature or, anything that can be analyzed.

An example of how the three intersect is the creative process. In the development of a novel the novelist designs their inventory of literary elements to incorporate into their book. Depending on the culture of the novelist the novel will have certain points of reference. Finally, a novelist uses language to articulate their narrative.