What Design Can’t Do

This book explores the sense of frustration that permeates design. Reviving historical manifestations of frustration, author Silvio Lorusso analyzes contemporary memes and social media shitstorms. To describe this oppressive crisis he creates a new critical vocabulary for readers to use in the future. This study offers a fresh perspective on the problem: instead of creating meaningful order, design may simply be a way of existing in chaos.

Once a promising field based on problem-solving, it has become a problem itself. Designers’ skills appear fragile and insignificant – their expertise is perceived indifferently, their experience is devalued by online services, their work is complicated by a range of misaligned external factors. If you see yourself as a designer without qualities; if you feel deceived, disappointed or betrayed by design, this book is for you.