What Design Can't Do – Essays on Design and Disillusionment | Silvio Lorusso

The design is broken.

Today’s designers, both young and experienced, are increasingly aware of this. Many feel powerless: they were taught that they had the tools to improve the world, but instead the world oppresses them. Behind the loud statements and hype lies a void of doubt and imposter syndrome. While such feelings have become the norm for the millennial generation, design culture only reinforces them. At conferences, they talk about “great responsibility,” but in reality, clients only want one thing: “a bigger logo.”

This book explores the disillusionment that pervades the design world. It examines how digital automation is leading to skill loss, how political gestures are becoming decorative elements for museum environments, and how the promises of design education are proving vague and uncertain. Silvio Lorucho combines historical examples of disillusionment with contemporary memes and social media posts, creating a new critical vocabulary that readers can use to make sense of this crisis. His exploration is both disturbing and somewhat comforting: perhaps design does not create an orderly world, but simply helps us to exist in chaos.

Once a promising field that was supposed to solve problems, it has become a problem itself. Designers face indifference to their work, the simplification of their skills thanks to online services, as well as external factors that neutralize their influence. If you feel like a “designer without qualities”, if you have been deceived, disappointed or betrayed by design - this book is for you.

Reviews
📖 "Disappointed in design? This book will help you understand why. And maybe even make you laugh. Silvio Lorucho, with a touch of irony, analyzes how design has become something too loud and what this means for its practitioners. After this book, you will no longer look at design the same way as before."
— *Guy Julien, author of Economies of Design

📖 “What happens when design becomes a smokescreen and can no longer be an engine of change? This is the question that Silvio Lorucho asks. How did form, no matter how cool and “destructive” it may be, become so useless and tiresome? Read carefully: we can no longer come up with a design solution to this painful realization.”
— *Gert Lovink, author of Stuck on the Platform

📖 "Disappointment in design is disappointment in the world. This book is important reading, not just for professionals. After all, design affects us all, and understanding its failures will help us understand where it does work."
— *Emanuele Quintz, author of Strange Design

📖 "Italian pessimism in design criticism at its best."
— Clara Balaguer, cultural activist and researcher of unofficial literature