slanted_publishers

🩵🤎 OUT NOW: 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 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 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.

This April, What was design? will be presented in Darmstadt at @form.social and in Frankfurt at @projekt_b25, inviting guests to further reflect on the perspectives and definitions of design brought together in the book—in a relaxed setting of conversation and drinks. More informations on our Website.

@slanted_publishers (pub.), Florian Walzel (ed.), @form.social (ed. advisor.), @pauljuer (design), 12 × 19 cm, 152 pages, English, hardcover with round spine, thread-stitching, offset printing with spot colors, ISBN: 978-3-69202-005-1, €26.– (DE)

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