What was design?

Please note: This is a pre-order only, the book gets shipped once published in March 2026.

What was design?—Declarations and definitions from a century of creative quest is a quick starter to one of modernity’s most contested terms. In its brief but steep career design was subject to vast controversy. Celebrated as an agent of change, accused as commercialization’s driving force, and regularly denounced as overused, the inquiry of its innermost meaning is ongoing. While the answers to the question “what is design?” are in permanent redefinition, it is high time for a review. This book takes a look back and offers the findings of a century of reflection on design in its most condensed form.

What was design? presents a collection of 87 historic single-sentence answers from practitioners, design scholars and philosophers: pointed and often strikingly contradictory.