Dragging Rectangles

Since the introduction of the Mac, and the Adobe-Quark-DTP worldview that followed, computer-based design tooling has largely revolved around dragging rectangles.

Want to insert a photo? Drag a rectangle. Want to change the width of your columns or gutters? Drag a bunch of rectangles. Want to take a screen designed for UIKit and see what it would look like on Android with Material Design? Drag a whole lot of rectangles

And yet I see nothing to tie the role of designer to rectangle-dragger. A designer is a manipulator of symbolic and aesthetic concepts, and that needn’t be limited to the input paradigms we’ve grown up with.