Design is central in the Digital Humanities approach.
Understanding the rhetoric of design, its persuasive force and central role in the shaping of arguments, is a critical tool for digital work in all disciplines.
But design is not about styling. It allows for substantial thinking and meaningful communication with a superset of writing tools, which span beyond—but do not exclude—the written word: executable programs, graphical interfaces, database design. Digital literacy, or design-skilled writing, is the ink and pen of digital humanists.
One need only consider the subtle and tightly controlled interplay among words, sounds, and images … to understand that these techniques are—as with design—about more than simply production: they are the means with which to investigate and articulate an idea.
Design in this context is also about producing new modes of knowledge, about exploring a new epistemological model.