Although design has become eminently newsworthy among the general public in our society, there is very little understanding to be found of the values and implications that underlie it. Design generates much heat but little light: we live in a world that has much design consciousness, but little design awareness. Nigel Whiteley analyses design's role and status today, and discusses what our obsession with it tells us about our own culture.

Design for Society is not an anti-design book; rather, it is an anti-consumerist-design book, in that it reveals what most people would agree are the socially and ecologically unsound values and unsatisfactory implications on which the system of consumerist design is constructed. In so doing, it prepares the ground for a more responsible and just type of design.