In fact this book is concerned mainly – not wholly – with a
minority profession: of designers whose work helps to give form
and order to the amenities of life, whether in the context of manufacture,
or of place and occasion. The very clumsiness of this defi nition
underlines the diffi culty of using one word to denote a wide
range of quite disparate experiences – both in the outcome of design
decisions, and in the activity of designing. The dictionary reference
above is selective; in practice the word is also applied to the product
of ‘a plan conceived in the mind’, not only as a set of drawings or
instructions, but as the ultimate outcome from manufacture.