What was design? Declarations and definitions from a century of creative quest
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- Category: Book
- Topic: Design, Graphic Design
- Publisher: Slanted
- Country: Germany
- Language: English
- Release: 2026
- Cover: Hardcover
- Binding: Perfect
- Size: 12 x 19 cm
- Pages: 152
What was design? is a quick starter to one of modernity’s most contested terms. In its brief but meteoric career, “design” was subject to vast controversy. Celebrated as an engine of change, denounced as a driving force of commercialization, and regularly lamented as overused, design remains a concept whose true meaning is still being sought. While answers to the question “What is design?” are constantly shifting, the time has come for a retrospective. This book looks back, presenting a century of design thinking in its most compact form: a collection of bold quotes.
What was design? Declarations and definitions from a century of creative quest pits 87 historical one-sentence answers from practitioners, theorists, and philosophers against one another. The result is a web of radical short-form definitions that remain strikingly contradictory in their references. This selection is accompanied by an essay from Florian Walzel, exploring the deeper reasons behind the conceptual ambiguity of design.
