Redesigning is the essence of designing

This week I started reading “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser. When different writers tell you a book is a good, then it must be true, so I ordered a copy. One of the first things Zinsser writes is that “rewriting is the essence of writing”.

This phrase resonated with me because I think this is the case with many creative jobs, including design. To design is to iterate. No great design was ever the first version, but the result of many different explorations, variations, and versions. Design is a whole lot of tweaking until it’s just right.

Of course all designers already know this. But I wonder if many people designers work for really understand this. Digital design is still often seen as producing screens for development teams to build.

Especially now with design systems, design can look like simply arranging components on a screen. Like we are assembling Lego blocks to certain specifications. When others see only the final Figma file, it’s easy to think that it’s the first thing the designer made.

In On Writing Well, Zinsser ends the second chapter with a picture that says it all. It’s a photo of the final manuscript of the chapter’s text, written on a typewriter, with Zinsser’s handwritten annotations all over it. It shows many crossed words and better words to replace them. There’s no better illustration of a writer’s work.

If we want to be understood, we shouldn’t present only our end result, but our iterations as well. Design is a lot of work. We can literally show it.