Slanted Publishers releases What was design?, a compact book design that collects 87 one-sentence definitions from a century of creative minds. By Walzel

There is something satisfying about a book that asks the question everyone in the field has tried to answer. What was design?, edited by Florian Walzel and published by Slanted Publishers, does exactly that. It gathers 87 short declarations from practitioners, theorists, and philosophers — then sets them loose against each other.

The book design by Paul Jürgens makes the tension visible from the first touch. The cover wraps a dark charcoal recycled stock (PEYDUR RECYCLED neuleinen) in dense rows of cyan type. The title repeats across the surface in a tight grid, line after line. It reads less like a title treatment and more like a typographic incantation. Below, "edited by Florian Walzel" and the Slanted mark sit quietly, letting the repetition do the heavy lifting.

Book Design That Turns Quotes into Visual Arguments

Inside, Jürgens gives each definition room to breathe. Bold serif letterforms sit center-aligned on the page, scaled to fill the spread. Shorter quotes land like headlines. Longer ones cascade down in stacked lines, each word carrying weight. Small numbered references anchor each quote to the chronological index at the back. The effect is direct — every page feels like a single, confident statement.

The material choices reinforce the editorial tone. Thread-stitching and a round spine give the 12 × 19 cm hardcover a permanence that suits its retrospective ambition. Ultraviolet SURBALIN endpapers add a sharp material contrast against the recycled cover. Offset printing with spot colors keeps the interior typography precise and clean on Holmen TRND 2.0 paper stock.

The second half shifts register. Walzel's essay explores why design resists a single definition. The layout moves from bold display type to a quieter two-column editorial grid with footnotes and citations. It grounds the preceding quotes in critical context, turning a collection into an argument.

A year register at the back maps all 87 contributors chronologically — from Kem Weber in 1925 to Silvio Lorusso in 2023. Color-coded dots link each name to its page. The index doubles as a timeline of design discourse, making a century of disagreement legible at a glance.

What was design? works because it trusts its content and its book design equally. As a piece of book design, it earns its place on the shelf. Jürgens and Walzel treat the object as an extension of the question — compact, deliberate, and built to hold contradictions without resolving them.