What was design?
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? pits seventy-eight 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.
Published by Slanted Publishers, edited by Florian Walzel with editorial advice from Jurek Werth. The book, measuring 12×19 cm and counting 152 pages, was designed by Paul Jürgens, using Roumald and Neue Haas Grotesk. Hardcover with round spine, thread-stitching, offset printed with spot colors. ISBN: 978–3–69202–005–1
