A reissue of John Chris Jones's classic work on design methodology, with a new introduction by Clive Dilnot.

designing designing is one of the most extraordinary books on design ever written. First published in 1984 and reprinted with this title and cover in 1991, the book was the product of ten years of auto-critique, reflection and experimentation on writing on designing. Offering a savage auto-critique of his own work on “methods”, as well as of the wider methods and ends of advanced industrial societies as a whole, this book challenges the traditional product- and progress- orientated focus on design by insisting that the world now coming into being requires designing to be understood as ‘a response to the whole of life.’ But designing designing is also unique in modern design thinking in its exploration of what writing on designing might be. Combining essays, interviews, reflections, performances, plays, poems, chance procedures, photographs, collages and quotes, Jones experiments with both form and content in an attempt to make a book which ‘is not simply about designing but is instead itself an instance of the ideas and processes explored within it.’

"Designing Designing is a particularly redemptive text ... not only because of the immense self-awareness and epistemic humility Jones demonstrates, but also because it explores in both its content and its form what else design and designing could be. In stark contrast to the predictable and stolid reification of design methods, principles, and practices today, this open-ended flexibility and responsiveness in design practice reflects in the structure of the book itself: a diverse collection of essays, personal reflections, anecdotes, conversations, interviews, and poetry." - Design and Culture