From a drawing of a line to a design: the path of a name

Abstract

The Portuguese language poses an epistemological challenge by uniting, under the term “desenho,” both the material act of drawing (dibujo) and ideation (diseño). This article discusses how the notions of drawing, text, and design are brought into tension in the creative process. Faced with the co-optation of the design project by market technocracy, which reduces it to “problem-solving” and empties it of its social function, this work proposes the recovery of its emancipatory potential. To this end, it aligns the act of drawing with writing, understanding both as embodied cognitive processes that demand a time of suspension, doubt, and maturation, at odds with market-driven acceleration. Drawing on Gilbert Simondon’s concept of transduction and the reflections of Roland Barthes and Mário de Andrade, the article argues that tactile experimentation with the stroke acts as a transductive operation. This dynamic does not reject contradictions but uses them as an inventive engine of individuation. Drawing (dibujo), as a critical laboratory of design (diseño), is thus essential for restoring the design discipline’s capacity for ethical-political intervention.